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[blastradius14]

You can always blight the enemies to death if you don't like volcanoes. AI isn't too strong at doing lots of things at once, so the more blight and destruction you put on the enemy, the more overall they won't be able to assault you properly until they fix it.


If you have enough mana and your city has a nightshade you can make your city invulnerable to magic and able to defend from even the strongest foes.

[another_guest]

Quick question: any tips on how to speeden up your advance early in the game, regardless of the chosen race or wizard picks?
I do the usual stuff, exploring ruins whenever the monsters aren't too strong, building smithy, granary, marketplace, barracks, armory (or is the first building a fighters guild?). Then I boost my city's defenses by training a few halberdiers or similar.
Next, farmers market, shrine, etc.
Once that is in place, 2 settlers for new cities nearby.
And of course I spend most of my gold to finish buildings earlier.

However I notice that even on "normal" difficulty it takes me a few decades to catch up with the enemy wizards... Even when I build shrines and such as early as possible, and try hard to claim a few nodes, I'll see most enemy wizards having more power than me when I look at the graphs.

Any brilliant tactical advice?

[Japo]

Originally posted by another_guest@Apr 19 2006, 10:21 AM
Any brilliant tactical advice?

Not really, but here's some stuff. I don't think it makes sense to postpone your expansion until your single city is all-mighty. I like to build as many settlers in each city as it's needed to occupy all surrounding terrain, just like in Civ, which was much like this game (no secret here).

And even talking exclusively about mana, all your cities will need a shrine very early in their development. Many cities with only a shrine each (and at least some of them will be more developed) create more mana than a single one with all the advanced buildings. Each city will pay for its building, and still grant a positive balance to pay for more soldiers, even if these are advanced units built in the capital (or capitals). And if you started with a Myrran race or conquered one, its very population creates mana for you, so the larger your empire the more mana you get.

[another_guest]

I'll give that a try, though I'm always annoyed when I've just built a few settlements early in the game and they're being overrun by monsters I can't take on yet (because at that point I've only had time to train like 2 halberdiers/similar for each city).

Usually I start building a shrine once it takes less than 100 turns as first indication (of course it won't take 100 turns because the city's production increases over time) or whenever I get rebels at 2% tax rate. Mana is usually not much of a problem, since for most types of magic I don't use the very basic creatures, so I spend little to no mana early in the game.

Before I liked to play on Myrran, but lately I prefer the regular plane because the nodes and such are not as hard to conquer... Well, at least some of them.

[Japo]

If you expand energetically don't worry about losing one of your outposts, it may perfectly happen but it wouldn't be a tragedy. And remember that the mana you manage to create goes not only to spell casting, but also to research and skill increase.

[Richrf]

Originally posted by Japofran+Apr 20 2006, 12:03 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Japofran @ Apr 20 2006, 12:03 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-another_guest@Apr 19 2006, 10:21 AM
Any brilliant tactical advice?

Not really, but here's some stuff. I don't think it makes sense to postpone your expansion until your single city is all-mighty. I like to build as many settlers in each city as it's needed to occupy all surrounding terrain, just like in Civ, which was much like this game (no secret here).
Many cities with only a shrine each (and at least some of them will be more developed) create more mana than a single one with all the advanced buildings. Each city will pay for its building, and still grant a positive balance to pay for more soldiers, even if these are advanced units built in the capital (or capitals). And if you started with a Myrran race or conquered one, its very population creates mana for you, so the larger your empire the more mana you get. [/b][/quote]

I like to build as many settlers in each city as it's needed to occupy all surrounding terrain, just like in Civ, which was much like this game (no secret here).

I personally disagree with this. I think it's better to concentrate on taking down neutral cities. This makes scouting very very important so you can find them. These netural cities will be usually very well developed compared to what you can do.

I find that if you can quickly capture netural or other wizard cities, you have a quick boast towards winning. By comparison taking down nodes are less important.

Certainly for very slow growing races like dwarves , they grow too slow for it to be worth building new cities. Each settler unit hurts your capital city pop, and unlike in the original civ, each settler unit that builds a city doesn't become immediately productive, but must pass through several turns as an outpost. If you are unlucky it can take a long long time, before it becomes a full fledged 1 pop village.

Halflings grow the fastest.

And even talking exclusively about mana, all your cities will need a shrine very early in their development.

It depends on what you mean by early. Certainly at the point it takes around say 90-100 turns to build (less with slow development), it's pointless.

It's hard to give general advise, since it depends on your setup but i find that neutral cities are the key to winning. If you capture them early, you can even keep pace if not exceed "hard" level opponents.

Heck a early blitz against impossible level opponents, can even allow you to keep pace with 'impossible' just by taking over the empire of one opposing wizard.

[another_guest]

In my experience, neutral cities are quite hard to conquer early in the game on harder levels. I've seen some that have 4 units of swordmen (4 swordmen in each unit) at the very beginning, and quickly increase to 6 and more units. Maybe I'm still a slow starter, but damn these cities can be difficult, since their troops have much more experience than your own newly created ones...

[laiocfar]

It's hard to give general advise, since it depends on your setup but i find that neutral cities are the key to winning. If you capture them early, you can even keep pace if not exceed "hard" level opponents.

When it say impossible its really imposible. At least to me.

[Richrf]

Originally posted by another_guest@Apr 21 2006, 01:37 PM
In my experience, neutral cities are quite hard to conquer early in the game on harder levels. I've seen some that have 4 units of swordmen (4 swordmen in each unit) at the very beginning, and quickly increase to 6 and more units. Maybe I'm still a slow starter, but damn these cities can be difficult, since their troops have much more experience than your own newly created ones...

In my experience, neutral cities are quite hard to conquer early in the game on harder levels. I've seen some that have 4 units of swordmen (4 swordmen in each unit) at the very beginning, and quickly increase to 6 and more units. Maybe I'm still a slow starter, but damn these cities can be difficult, since their troops have much more experience than your own newly created ones...

True, but they are all of the same type, so you can beat them using the right kind of troops. For example with an army of spirites against mere swordman you can hurt them very badly. or better yet use slingers.

Originally posted by laiocfar@Apr 22 2006, 03:17 AM

When it say impossible its really imposible. At least to me.

The computer cheats like crazy.

*Computer Wizard has 15 picks

*Population growth is 3X

*Production point/Gold/Food/Mana production is 2.5X

*Spell research is 1.25X

*Upkeep is 0.5X

It's winnable, but you have to be really good and know all the tricks. I found it unwinable a few months ago too short of using 11 book strategies, but now I managed to win three times , using 'normal' strategies.

And there are a lot of much better players who can win impossible fairly easily.

Personally i find that proper adjustment of tax rates is the key, most players probably don't touch it, or set it too low. Even if tax rates cause some unrest in some cities it might still be worth it overall.