Arise, Riders of Rohanna! Ride for Molach! [SPOILERS!]

[Ranamar]

I think the key is to figure out what the core items of you plan are. What is the state of game you ideally want. Converge on a huge Mobility-fueled stomp? Aim for GPP spam? Large sprawling cities with cottage spam?

Obviously this get adjusted as the game continues, but it will also help focus where you want to specialize. The rest of planning is build enough support in the other areas to pull it off efficiently. i.e. if you want to rush horses, make sure you don't tank the economy, etc.

I am aware of the fact that I rarely identify the time to attack. I'm hoping someone else in this thread will do that, because I will only grudgingly recognize it.

That's actually why the line I quoted struck home: there's always another unit, or civic, or whatever, that would be handy, if only we had it... but that takes time, and I'm less aware of how much our opponents are advancing while we are getting that next thing.

HBR and Construction are probably worth it for the 2-move collateral and Warrior upgrades, but I think more than that would be situational. We'd be able to build some cats while getting the cash to buy our actual line troopers. (Although I'd be more concerned about cost than anything, for merc losses, since they don't give war weariness.)

Edit: Supposedly, Conquest boosts sack gold, too. What I was really using Conquest for, in my game, was free exp on my built units and, more importantly, a way to keep city growth under control: farms can drive your growth rate through the roof. If building a unit will keep things from growing, that's a good way to use surplus food, since there are enough potentially-useful buildings to grow with.

Edit2: Handy discovery: Warcry works on *all* units. This includes catapults. Mobility warcry catapults are move 3, as well as strength 5 on offense. I found this helps significantly for both ease of deployment and survivability. (Survivability being getting above the 80% retreat chance...) It also gives the equivalent of blitz, so you don't need to worry about trying to get units with blitz early on: give them combat/shock/whatever promotions to make them effective, instead. Also, at least in this game that I played, there was absolutely no need for religion. Now that I've mostly beaten the Sheaim, I'm finally going to research Honor and maybe see about priests.

[Molach]

Ohmygods a turn. PANIC.

Here's what met me upon opening save:


Accidently hit 'e' key for no good reason. So the scout automated, and went NW onto a hut. Got 37 gold. This was before I founded city so probably missed out on crafting tech. And I didn't get to move him to the ancient tower. Wellwell. He can go free the demon warrior instead. (I did remember to turn off automation now) Warrior went SE, saw bananas in jungle.

...also Brigit is in the game.


Map was altered. 1W was now on a hill, and 1N was not. I did not have visibility, but hoped the rest of the place was still the same. Also, barren deserts north, an incence , and a pre-placed mine one north. (After ending turn I noticed that this mine is on plains, so should be some metal here). Settled 1W, which is now a plains hill. Immediate map was pretty much the same, the two dyes to keep me teching. Iching for water mana now to spring that desert north. At least I can use desert to attack barbs with -25% odds.

So far that means new wishlist is: Bronze Working (well that was already here), Fishing, Elementalism (or Message from the Deep + shrine)... Hmmm. Hard to stay on target.

Broken sepulcher west of demon warrior, and another unique feature SE-wards of my capital, but even zooming out I cannot see which that is.

Settle the city Rochirost, which (should be) LotR-elvish for "Horse-Lord City". Will just use elven names for my cities, try to not make them too obvious because surely my opponents can translate themselves without too much effort. (Abandoned the "Javiel" concept for being too silly).

After settling I see a ancient forest/pirate cove coast, a 2/1/4 - tile, which will improve to 4/3/6 with use. Mmmm, fishing. Need another city for that, though. And a rainforestful of jungle to the south, so gonna need BW before long. There is a lake to my east, and I see another river through the jungle south, so farming business should be operable. Further east I can just make out some more ocean, waves lapping on the shore, so I should be able span the width of my land with a few cities.

Founded my city (changed to Rochirost later. Rochost is just Horse-city). And put up some signs...


Demos before founding:


...and after:


Thoughts?

I would really have liked some farmable green to my north, and less jungle to my south.

[Molach]

Password is of course 'rohan'

[Ichabod]

Opening seems pretty obvious, I guess. There's few tiles that can be improved with only Agri + Calendar, so go for those. Idea for consideration: farm one of teh dies. Not sure if worth it.

After that, things get thougher. We need to see more of the map, but for now the second city possibilities are fairly limited. We'll need tech and we'll need it fast. It seems likely that commerce > food will be the key of the start, but I cannot be sure yet (plantation dye > farm in this case).

The big question appears to be: how soon to we want education? We can cottage plains and the riverside grasshill. Will it be worth it, does it speed up BW? Hard to tell...

The proposed second cities seem nice, since they give instant trade routes without roads. If the land is all yucky jungle and barren plains, resource sharing will be needed between first and second cities. The capital could lend that beautiful corn for some turns, for example.

My veredict: needs more exploring.

By the way, you could probably have replayed the exploring misclick. You'd get that terrain revealed either way. I don't think anyone would hold something against you.

[Molach]

By the way, you could probably have replayed the exploring misclick. You'd get that terrain revealed either way. I don't think anyone would hold something against you.

Probably. But it was my press, not my 2-year old's, so I'll just be more careful. Or else

Besides I think it'll be good to get the demon in play faster (hopefully there isn't a sea between us), and scout would have been slow in the southern jungle anyway.

[Ranamar]

Cash isn't terribly bad early in this game, anyway, even if you might have gotten a tech. It's somewhere in the 50-100 range to buy a settler from one of the random events, and there's another where you can buy a GE for 75, so it could be worth building that much bank up sometime after we're developed a bit.

It definitely needs more exploring, but I'd agree with settling on the river first. At least one of each of your resources are on the river, so far, so you can delay exploration for other techs and still get the benefit of your starting area resources. It looks like you've got water 2S of the dye, also, so it's really going to be worth finding out what's down there to see how much space you have.

[Molach]

Looks like it is getting reloaded, I had a 2-movility settler rather than starting settler bonus one.
Gotta wonder if the start (starting position) is gonna be my original screenshot or what I saw this time around.

And I'm reeealy wondering about education. Capital will, at size 6, work 2 dyes, corn, and rest on either ancient forests or mined hills. Not really sure when I'd start working the riverside plains cottage I'd put up. I'll certainly get to BW faster without Edu. BW opens up the jungled dyes to the south, which will help teching. Edu is decent because it let's me start with 2xp troops, but perhaps I can use the desert tiles for attacking incoming barbs for exp. But again, with BW I can mine jungle hills, produce some extra hammers for a couple extra warriors so I can afford to take some 50-50 shots.

But jungle will be a pain to clear, and I'll be severly behind anyone with a 'clear' start. Hopefully north is better, and there might be cities that will need cottages there. Have no great desire to clear 20 tiles of jungle just to plop down my two next cities.

Come to think of it, I think I will send my scout NW when the reload comes, and try to free the demon warriors as quick as possible. Bring 'em back to play zone defense North of my city. Found out while testing that a demon is good vs. skeletons - immune to the +1 death skeletons get so he can attack at str 2 vs. 2, and win a fight because of stoneskin and start the exp-train. Obviously better on defense. Scout will of course not move onto the hut on the hill, rather N-NW for two moves.

So calendar -> crafting/Mining/Bronze working -> (fishing?)/ edu -> construction (few catapults) -> HBR (elite warrior upgrade, chariot spam).

And festivals somewhere in there. After mining, maybe.

All subject to change after I reveal some more land.

[Qgqqqqq]

An amalgamation.

The start you got was ellinmists one, and we each altered your start in slightly different ways.

The one thing I can remember is that the incense isn't there.

[Ichabod]

Another reload!? Damn...

Well, seeing as it is a new map, I think you don't need to replay your moves. Especially the big vision from the starting settler will change things considerably.

There's no way we can pop that hut for a tech if we settle on the same spot, because the borders of the city will pop them before the city is considered to be settled (and no cities = no chance of tech).

That warrior isn't that strong, because it'll lost the stoneskin promotion after the first battle. I'd send the scout to the tower on turn 1, even if that delays releasing him. Maybe we see something that changes the capital position.

Since Ellimist added an incense to our start, i can presume we got the short end of the stick, i.e. our start was one that needed improvements due to being weaker. I hope everyone has the same difficulty in expansion that we have with all that jungle and desert.

[Ichabod]

I get it now!

We were hit by Stasis!