-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Thanks for the feedback. 
[video=youtube_share;s2DHZSeCwaM]http://youtu.be/s2DHZSeCwaM[/video]
[video=youtube_share;s2DHZSeCwaM]http://youtu.be/s2DHZSeCwaM[/video]
fear the turtle!
Also, great job swooping in on (Kingston?) - the city that was being attacked by the ogre. I'm learning a lot from your LP.
Also, great job swooping in on (Kingston?) - the city that was being attacked by the ogre. I'm learning a lot from your LP.
This episode is really interesting to see the strategy of the AI. If I hadn't seen the massing of enemy troops with the green bat unit earlier I would have thought the AI was cheating. But no, they were building up quietly ready to unleash their hordes.
So in this episode we see the change of the tide of battle and this Let's Play series is not going to be as quick as I had thought. Before this episode I thought we had maybe another two episodes and we would have won. After what happens in this episode ... well, things are getting interesting.
[video=youtube_share;o8rTlkzNuaU]http://youtu.be/o8rTlkzNuaU[/video]
So in this episode we see the change of the tide of battle and this Let's Play series is not going to be as quick as I had thought. Before this episode I thought we had maybe another two episodes and we would have won. After what happens in this episode ... well, things are getting interesting.
[video=youtube_share;o8rTlkzNuaU]http://youtu.be/o8rTlkzNuaU[/video]
Nooooooo! Mock Turtle soup!
I liked the way the AI handled the Turtle on the other hand, it doesn't appear to be pressing home the advantage with any spare units from the South.
I was also wandering about how to do the rear guard action: summon expendable units to distract the AI and allow more valuable units to escape?
I liked the way the AI handled the Turtle on the other hand, it doesn't appear to be pressing home the advantage with any spare units from the South.
I was also wandering about how to do the rear guard action: summon expendable units to distract the AI and allow more valuable units to escape?
Last edited:
I'm not sure how the AI makes its choice on targetting. It seems to allow weak troops to escape if it can bring greater damage on other units (I think)
Here's the next episode...
[video=youtube_share;paqe25fCizU]http://youtu.be/paqe25fCizU[/video]
Here's the next episode...
[video=youtube_share;paqe25fCizU]http://youtu.be/paqe25fCizU[/video]
Great videos, you have a good voice and style for this sort of thing. It is interesting to see another players decisions, I tend to have a lot less troops than you but have them much more heavily buffed and you are very cautious where I would be aggressive and a bit vice versa too After watching the videos in the future I probably will build more units as I hadn't realised how few I built in comparison. I hadn't noticed how weak the defences are on lava either but your video really shows the importance so I will be much more aware of that in the future.
The only thing which kinda frustrates me watching it haha, is that you never dispel the weakness curse you get on you from the rats. I forget the % of how much it weakens you but it really is very considerable and is easily dispelled with Basic Dispel. I have just got up to the point where your 1st turtle died and I think if you had dispelled the curse on it then it would have survived. Also when a unit is surrounded by units going for the melee resistance buff instead of the attack one makes more sense as you are going to get attacked more then you will be able to attack, plus it is a higher %.
Anyway, I hope that comes across alright, just thoughts while I watched it. Now time to watch the rest...
After watching the videos in the future I probably will build more units as I hadn't realised how few I built in comparison. I hadn't noticed how weak the defences are on lava either but your video really shows the importance so I will be much more aware of that in the future.The only thing which kinda frustrates me watching it haha, is that you never dispel the weakness curse you get on you from the rats. I forget the % of how much it weakens you but it really is very considerable and is easily dispelled with Basic Dispel. I have just got up to the point where your 1st turtle died and I think if you had dispelled the curse on it then it would have survived. Also when a unit is surrounded by units going for the melee resistance buff instead of the attack one makes more sense as you are going to get attacked more then you will be able to attack, plus it is a higher %.
Anyway, I hope that comes across alright, just thoughts while I watched it. Now time to watch the rest...
Thanks once again for the comments. I like to hear perspectives on how other players play the game and in subsequent games have implemented many of the suggestions in the way I play.
I also usually only have a small number of mid and high level units but in this game because of the proximity to the AI players I needed a meat-shield of weak units. As an example, in most games I would usually only build one or two warrior class units right at the start just for getting the neutral cities - then focus on a few halberdiers etc.
I think you are right about the dispelling of the weakness but I think weakness only nerfs your attacks and not your defences which means it doesn't impact your survivability other than through counterattacks. I'll have to check that out though. Also my resources are absolute crap in this game so I'm trying to no spend gold or mana without a very good reason.
As far as buffing the turtle was concerned, I didn't know it was going to be attacked by that many troops so I don't think I had a chance to make any real choices with it. In the circumstances buffing defensively would have definitely been the best option.
Anyhow, here's episode 18...
[video=youtube_share;IqqWwuJQQfY]http://youtu.be/IqqWwuJQQfY[/video]
I like to hear perspectives on how other players play the game and in subsequent games have implemented many of the suggestions in the way I play.I also usually only have a small number of mid and high level units but in this game because of the proximity to the AI players I needed a meat-shield of weak units. As an example, in most games I would usually only build one or two warrior class units right at the start just for getting the neutral cities - then focus on a few halberdiers etc.
I think you are right about the dispelling of the weakness but I think weakness only nerfs your attacks and not your defences which means it doesn't impact your survivability other than through counterattacks. I'll have to check that out though. Also my resources are absolute crap in this game so I'm trying to no spend gold or mana without a very good reason.
As far as buffing the turtle was concerned, I didn't know it was going to be attacked by that many troops so I don't think I had a chance to make any real choices with it. In the circumstances buffing defensively would have definitely been the best option.
Anyhow, here's episode 18...
[video=youtube_share;IqqWwuJQQfY]http://youtu.be/IqqWwuJQQfY[/video]
I've heard people mention they usually build fewer troops and even you say that you don't usually build as many but only did it because of early proximity to the AI. I figure it's because you are use to playing on Water maps, though not sure about the others. I say that because in my very first game, which was on Normal, I too only built a few units and played a little like I do in Civ5 which is group of 2-3 units taking care of weak neutrals (barbarians). By the time I had by first war I had a few Mid units and struck down the AI player's forces very easily. Then after expanding enough and getting high level units fully buffed that were nearly unkillable and using them to clear realms I learn to love the high end units as they practically never died.
However my first game had taught me a lot of BAD habits. I read the forums on how bad the AI was and how easy Impossible was so I figured I'd give it a try. I selected Great Land map type because I'd already seen on normal how poor the AI was at handling water and easy it was to exploit picking their troops off when in ship form. Well I got a bit of a rude awakening when I hit Impossible. I started near the Rat King Wizard and even though I was trying to field mostly Veterans and Rangers, instead of their more basic form, he was kicking my arse with basic troops and LOTS of them. I didn't have the gold income to keep fielding units at the rate I was losing them and he out numbered me over 4:1 in units.
That's when I started running the numbers on unit cost vs effectiveness. Most basic units cost 20-25 gold where as the mid range units run you 80-120 gold. That is 4-6 times the cost but their stats are clearly not 4-6 times better. Those 4-6 basic units can easily over take a single mid unit given that their stats aren't even twice as good. They can even win out on upkeep as a lot of the mid units run 3x the upkeep of their more basic unit making at 3:1 ratio very cost effective.
It was slow going but switching all 5 of my cities to producing basic units I managed to slowly turned things around. I didn't have the luxury of terrain bottle neck that you had. Instead I had a flat open plain between me and the AI that was about 8 hexes wide, had 2 of my cities at entrance that were about 5-6 hexes away from his cities. Of course I won that war and eventually the game but I feel only due in part to bad AI and terrain. The Terrain because another AI declared war on me but there was a lake blocking him and so I used range to pick off his units crossing the water, other wise I would of lost a 2 front war. And bad AI because the AI seem to rarely press the attack as much as he should of combined with the water crossing AI should of taken the longer land route around.
The point of this is thanks to the lessons learned I now field huge armies of basic units because they are cheap and easy to deploy and can easily over whelm a few mid level units. I have such overwhelming numbers with them that I often have armies of Rogues or Rat Robbers lay siege to undead cities and their forces, even though it's a bad match given the immunity to Death Damage. Their numbers simply overwhelm and the fact that I can field several more every two turns is huge. I steam roll all the AI and don't even need to bother being as careful as you are with things like resistances and such.
Now that's I've explained the benefits of zerg rushing your opponents let's cover city management. The Icons and long running nature of the LP makes it hard to remember what all you have built in what cities, at least for us viewers. But given the production totals, icons, and build options I was able to roughly tell that in your one island city that is producing gold you seem to have a lot of craftsman guilds. This is a bad idea as they are a poor source of gold until late game. Instead you should always build the % increase buildings first. The reason is you get 2 gold for Castle, 4 gold for Market, 2 gold for Rouge/Rat Guild. That is 1 gold less then Craftsman sure but it is offset by the very next building. Tax office increases your gold production by 50%, so that 8 gold because 12. If you had built craftsman guild instead of Rouge/Rat guild then you would only be 1 gold higher for a short period followed by the 2nd craftsman guild instead of the tax office making you tied. The real money starts flowing it after that as you Bank gives 75% extra gold which means an extra 6 gold, where as a new craftsman would only be 3, so the bank is worth 2 craftsman. Then of course is the Mint for 100% bonus meaning 8 more. And Finally if your Human yet another 100% with treasure house for yet another 8 gold. Now that you have a +225%-325% bonus to gold production you start building craftsman as each one of them will produce 9.75-12.75 gold.
Because of the percentage bonuses you want to specialize your cities to produce only one resource if possible. Like in the case of the gold producing city each building that is not devoted to gold production is basically 9-12 gold per turn your losing. I use Undead for mana production because they are the only ones who can produce mana for practically no gold upkeep and only ones who have a mana building which is not limited to 1 per city. Thus I don't know their gold buildings that well which is why I only mention Human/Monster buildings. It's not to late to turn around your gold producing city as you just build craftsman too early.
I have 4 basic types of Cities I build. Gold, Food, and Mana are the 3 obvious ones. The 4th is troops which I build near resources that give bonuses to troops, such as Nevril Armor. I try if possible to get more than 1 troop boosting resource into a single city to save on gold cost. It's much more effective to build your troops with the perks then it is to simply claim the perks in remote cities an upgrade them later. Any troop upgrading resource that happens to be in range of my other specialized cities that can't get turned into a resource building I don't even bother developing. As such I have a lot of undeveloped resources because they are not cost effective.
The bonuses of this setup is I can field lots of little units with some fairly decent upgrades that would not normally be worth putting them on. I mean each Nevril I get for free on those units is worth 175 gold. Plus all the standard upgrades from normal buildings. I always turn my Capital into Troop city since it already has first building on the path and I need troops. After that though I only build troop cities when I find resources that I can use to buff the troops. I know I said earlier I like to zerg the enemy and I do that mostly with Rogues/Robbers as the gold specialized cities all have to build those guilds in order to advance. So they are pumping out my cheap cannon fodder units while my troop cities pump out fighters/archers with a few upgrades.
Once the gold is flowing in like water and I have 50+ units on the map fighting wars on 2-3 fronts, as my tactic allows we to easily take on multiple AIs. I then start using the Upgrade option to upgrade units in the field to mid tier units. I mostly choose to upgrade units that have gained some levels and already have perks from the city they were built in. But sometimes I upgrade units of tactical reasons, such as upgrading fully heals a unit so attack then upgrade does damage and then heals. Other times a unit is just in a better position so upgrading them to do extra damage on the attack is what's needed. By this point I also have a few resource troop buildings such as Minotaur and Stubborn Knights so I'm building them to complement my forces.
So basically my army starts as huge amount of basic units, then slowly gets a few mid units slipped in the mix. Followed by eventually switching to almost completely all mid units because I have the gold. As this point I usually stop producing Rogues and Robbers all together, instead I upgrade the ones I've built to Cutthroats and Pirates. I build the 100-200 gold mid units only from my troop cities as I likely have 5-6 of those cities by now. Eventually when my income gets high enough though I start repeating the process with mid units and go for the high end units, including temple units.
The thing to keep in mind with this strategy is that they troops are expendable. Sure temple units are powerful but at 700 a pop I can field like 3-5 mid range units which could wipe the floor with it. Or 35 Basic units which I know can wipe the floor with it. I know because I've had the dumb quest system drop temple units in the middle of my empire and tell me to kill it so I use all the basic troops I was making to swarm it and kill the thing in like 4 turns only losing 5 troops. 100 gold lost vs 700 gold killed seems like a fair trade.
I know some may try to argue how a fully perked out temple unit is nearly unkillable and that is only somewhat true. The first problem is you actually need the gold to build and perk them which can run about 3K gold as I recall. For that price someone can field 4 temple units. With some proper tactics those 4 temple units can likely take out the 1 uber unit. I've actually lost fully upgraded temple units that I sent into the Realms alone so I know they are not invulnerable. The more I've played the more I feel most of the perk upgrades are just too expensive and it's more cost effective to spend that gold on more units. Putting all your eggs in one basket is very risky and against a good foe you will be scrambling to defend your large empire with those few units against their massive army.
Personally I can't wait till MP to try out my strategies against some actual competent opponents instead of the AI. Also I think the really good strategies will start to emerge with MP.
However my first game had taught me a lot of BAD habits. I read the forums on how bad the AI was and how easy Impossible was so I figured I'd give it a try. I selected Great Land map type because I'd already seen on normal how poor the AI was at handling water and easy it was to exploit picking their troops off when in ship form. Well I got a bit of a rude awakening when I hit Impossible. I started near the Rat King Wizard and even though I was trying to field mostly Veterans and Rangers, instead of their more basic form, he was kicking my arse with basic troops and LOTS of them. I didn't have the gold income to keep fielding units at the rate I was losing them and he out numbered me over 4:1 in units.
That's when I started running the numbers on unit cost vs effectiveness. Most basic units cost 20-25 gold where as the mid range units run you 80-120 gold. That is 4-6 times the cost but their stats are clearly not 4-6 times better. Those 4-6 basic units can easily over take a single mid unit given that their stats aren't even twice as good. They can even win out on upkeep as a lot of the mid units run 3x the upkeep of their more basic unit making at 3:1 ratio very cost effective.
It was slow going but switching all 5 of my cities to producing basic units I managed to slowly turned things around. I didn't have the luxury of terrain bottle neck that you had. Instead I had a flat open plain between me and the AI that was about 8 hexes wide, had 2 of my cities at entrance that were about 5-6 hexes away from his cities. Of course I won that war and eventually the game but I feel only due in part to bad AI and terrain. The Terrain because another AI declared war on me but there was a lake blocking him and so I used range to pick off his units crossing the water, other wise I would of lost a 2 front war. And bad AI because the AI seem to rarely press the attack as much as he should of combined with the water crossing AI should of taken the longer land route around.
The point of this is thanks to the lessons learned I now field huge armies of basic units because they are cheap and easy to deploy and can easily over whelm a few mid level units. I have such overwhelming numbers with them that I often have armies of Rogues or Rat Robbers lay siege to undead cities and their forces, even though it's a bad match given the immunity to Death Damage. Their numbers simply overwhelm and the fact that I can field several more every two turns is huge. I steam roll all the AI and don't even need to bother being as careful as you are with things like resistances and such.
Now that's I've explained the benefits of zerg rushing your opponents let's cover city management. The Icons and long running nature of the LP makes it hard to remember what all you have built in what cities, at least for us viewers. But given the production totals, icons, and build options I was able to roughly tell that in your one island city that is producing gold you seem to have a lot of craftsman guilds. This is a bad idea as they are a poor source of gold until late game. Instead you should always build the % increase buildings first. The reason is you get 2 gold for Castle, 4 gold for Market, 2 gold for Rouge/Rat Guild. That is 1 gold less then Craftsman sure but it is offset by the very next building. Tax office increases your gold production by 50%, so that 8 gold because 12. If you had built craftsman guild instead of Rouge/Rat guild then you would only be 1 gold higher for a short period followed by the 2nd craftsman guild instead of the tax office making you tied. The real money starts flowing it after that as you Bank gives 75% extra gold which means an extra 6 gold, where as a new craftsman would only be 3, so the bank is worth 2 craftsman. Then of course is the Mint for 100% bonus meaning 8 more. And Finally if your Human yet another 100% with treasure house for yet another 8 gold. Now that you have a +225%-325% bonus to gold production you start building craftsman as each one of them will produce 9.75-12.75 gold.
Because of the percentage bonuses you want to specialize your cities to produce only one resource if possible. Like in the case of the gold producing city each building that is not devoted to gold production is basically 9-12 gold per turn your losing. I use Undead for mana production because they are the only ones who can produce mana for practically no gold upkeep and only ones who have a mana building which is not limited to 1 per city. Thus I don't know their gold buildings that well which is why I only mention Human/Monster buildings. It's not to late to turn around your gold producing city as you just build craftsman too early.
I have 4 basic types of Cities I build. Gold, Food, and Mana are the 3 obvious ones. The 4th is troops which I build near resources that give bonuses to troops, such as Nevril Armor. I try if possible to get more than 1 troop boosting resource into a single city to save on gold cost. It's much more effective to build your troops with the perks then it is to simply claim the perks in remote cities an upgrade them later. Any troop upgrading resource that happens to be in range of my other specialized cities that can't get turned into a resource building I don't even bother developing. As such I have a lot of undeveloped resources because they are not cost effective.
The bonuses of this setup is I can field lots of little units with some fairly decent upgrades that would not normally be worth putting them on. I mean each Nevril I get for free on those units is worth 175 gold. Plus all the standard upgrades from normal buildings. I always turn my Capital into Troop city since it already has first building on the path and I need troops. After that though I only build troop cities when I find resources that I can use to buff the troops. I know I said earlier I like to zerg the enemy and I do that mostly with Rogues/Robbers as the gold specialized cities all have to build those guilds in order to advance. So they are pumping out my cheap cannon fodder units while my troop cities pump out fighters/archers with a few upgrades.
Once the gold is flowing in like water and I have 50+ units on the map fighting wars on 2-3 fronts, as my tactic allows we to easily take on multiple AIs. I then start using the Upgrade option to upgrade units in the field to mid tier units. I mostly choose to upgrade units that have gained some levels and already have perks from the city they were built in. But sometimes I upgrade units of tactical reasons, such as upgrading fully heals a unit so attack then upgrade does damage and then heals. Other times a unit is just in a better position so upgrading them to do extra damage on the attack is what's needed. By this point I also have a few resource troop buildings such as Minotaur and Stubborn Knights so I'm building them to complement my forces.
So basically my army starts as huge amount of basic units, then slowly gets a few mid units slipped in the mix. Followed by eventually switching to almost completely all mid units because I have the gold. As this point I usually stop producing Rogues and Robbers all together, instead I upgrade the ones I've built to Cutthroats and Pirates. I build the 100-200 gold mid units only from my troop cities as I likely have 5-6 of those cities by now. Eventually when my income gets high enough though I start repeating the process with mid units and go for the high end units, including temple units.
The thing to keep in mind with this strategy is that they troops are expendable. Sure temple units are powerful but at 700 a pop I can field like 3-5 mid range units which could wipe the floor with it. Or 35 Basic units which I know can wipe the floor with it. I know because I've had the dumb quest system drop temple units in the middle of my empire and tell me to kill it so I use all the basic troops I was making to swarm it and kill the thing in like 4 turns only losing 5 troops. 100 gold lost vs 700 gold killed seems like a fair trade.
I know some may try to argue how a fully perked out temple unit is nearly unkillable and that is only somewhat true. The first problem is you actually need the gold to build and perk them which can run about 3K gold as I recall. For that price someone can field 4 temple units. With some proper tactics those 4 temple units can likely take out the 1 uber unit. I've actually lost fully upgraded temple units that I sent into the Realms alone so I know they are not invulnerable. The more I've played the more I feel most of the perk upgrades are just too expensive and it's more cost effective to spend that gold on more units. Putting all your eggs in one basket is very risky and against a good foe you will be scrambling to defend your large empire with those few units against their massive army.
Personally I can't wait till MP to try out my strategies against some actual competent opponents instead of the AI. Also I think the really good strategies will start to emerge with MP.
wow, thanks for the post, very useful. Just a few questions, if you don't mind:
1) doesn't this get pretty tedious? I'm at turn 130 in my first game, it's only at 'normal' so it's not much of a challenge, but i'm already finding it getting a bit tedious - how/when do your games end?
2) as I said, it's just my first game, but I found rogues to be almost worthless - they die like moths. Any tips?
Last edited:
Re #2, they DO die frequently, but they are cheap and only cost gold to upkeep. So, no need to worry about food levels when you crank them out. Makes building cities easier, and reinforces the gold loop (Gold structures require the rogue production building anyway for humans).
Das123: I am pretty sure that a % drop in unit power effects defence and not just attack, but worth testing to be sure.
Spyre2000: That is a very interesting way of doing war and I'll have to give it a go. As you say, it will be very interesting how that plays out over multi-player. If it is an all conquering strategy the devs will have to make upgrades cheaper or make the jump in the power of units per tier greater. In fact multi-player is really going to show up the imbalances, however subsequent patching should make it a better game in the end so it's all good.
Spyre2000: That is a very interesting way of doing war and I'll have to give it a go. As you say, it will be very interesting how that plays out over multi-player. If it is an all conquering strategy the devs will have to make upgrades cheaper or make the jump in the power of units per tier greater. In fact multi-player is really going to show up the imbalances, however subsequent patching should make it a better game in the end so it's all good.
Defense reduction does not change with unit health. According to the pre-battle preview stats (and what I've observed- come on 5 HP vamp being attacked by a Fire Elemental!)
Very interesting post Spyre2000. I think you are right about an islands game versus the larger land maps. I've tried a few games now on other maps and it is extremely difficult on impossible to manage the wars against AI - particularly when you can't hold bottle-necks. The multiple area effect spells the AI can throw each turn in the late game decimate any troops and it really hurts losing a loved high-level unit.
As far as weakness affecting defences - I'm about 85% sure now that it doesn't. It definitely affects counter attacks while defending but it seems your ability to survive isn't touched. Would be interesting to see if anyone has been able to definitively test this though.
Here's episode 19.
[video=youtube_share;HsTmC1V_rqU]http://youtu.be/HsTmC1V_rqU[/video]
As far as weakness affecting defences - I'm about 85% sure now that it doesn't. It definitely affects counter attacks while defending but it seems your ability to survive isn't touched. Would be interesting to see if anyone has been able to definitively test this though.
Here's episode 19.
[video=youtube_share;HsTmC1V_rqU]http://youtu.be/HsTmC1V_rqU[/video]