Early Expansion and use of Mages

[En Forcer]

Question for you:

In the first turns (lets say up to turn 30) do you carefully husband your mages and keep everyone at home researching? Then how do you expand? Conventional forces only?

Or do you split them? Maybe 3 mages go fight while 3 stay home? Or all fight and then come back to start research by turn 10 or so (and are experienced as a result).

I've tried all of these and have yet to find a style that I am happy with.

What are your thoughts on how you expand and use mages in the beginning?

[quantum_mechani]

En Forcer said:
Question for you:

In the first turns (lets say up to turn 30) do you carefully husband your mages and keep everyone at home researching? Then how do you expand? Conventional forces only?

Or do you split them? Maybe 3 mages go fight while 3 stay home? Or all fight and then come back to start research by turn 10 or so (and are experienced as a result).

I've tried all of these and have yet to find a style that I am happy with.

What are your thoughts on how you expand and use mages in the beginning?

Other than special cases, I keep my mages at home researching. I rely on my pretender, bless troops, and mercs for the most part. Or for a nation like Pythium or Jotunhiem you can just use the normal nationals on their own.

This not to say I never use mages in expansion, anyone who can cast lighting bolt, for instance, is an immense help. But in general I would never have more than 1/4 of my mages away from research in the early game.

[FrankTrollman]

Usually I send at least one top-tier national mage with each early expansion army. That means that an expanding Man army gets a Crone, and an expanding Machaka army gets a Sorcerer (or Black Sorcerer). This way I can search each newly conquered province for sites as soon as it comes available.

In almost all cases, my research mages are the minor national mages - Daughters of Avalon, Dryads, Witch Doctors, Initiates of the Deep. The high class mages search for magic sites, and that means that they might as well be with the army while it moves forward.

A classic Man army, for example, contains a Castelan and a Crone, and a huge pile of Longbowmen. The Longbowmen sit in the back in several piles and shoot stuff. There is also a small group of piles of riff raff that holds and attacks in the front to confuse indeps. You take a province, the Crone searches, the Castelan patrols, you set taxes down to about 80%, and you buy whatever crap the province can build. The next turn you set taxes up again, you fold the lousy troops you just bought into your army as a skirmishing farce and you move on. Each army takes an indep province every other turn and you maximize your income of Nature, Air, and Gold from the get-go.

Home researchers should be evaluated in terms of gold to research efficiency, so there's no reason to use a Norna or a Deep Seer when a Seith or an Initiate will do. The searching, however, needs a big mage, so the mage may as well help out however she can in the main army at the same time.

-Frank

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
You take a province, the Crone searches, the Castelan patrols, you set taxes down to about 80%, and you buy whatever crap the province can build.

Setting the taxes to 80% is just about enough by itself to get rid of 20 points of unrest in one turn, so there's no real need for the patrolling. I'd instead have two crones so that you don't have to stop your expansion at all.

Home researchers should be evaluated in terms of gold to research efficiency, so there's no reason to use a Norna or a Deep Seer when a Seith or an Initiate will do.

If you buy initiates, then you won't have deep seers when you want to use them.

[The_Tauren13]

Graeme Dice said:
Setting the taxes to 80% is just about enough by itself to get rid of 20 points of unrest in one turn, so there's no real need for the patrolling.

Not even close. 80% taxes clears 6-9 unrest per turn.
As for the patrolling, the starting troops for most nations can clear the unrest caused by a battle in one turn, so theres no need to set the taxes below 100 at all.

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
Not even close. 80% taxes clears 6-9 unrest per turn.

Then set it to 60% for a turn as you rarely get more than 15 points of unrest.

As for the patrolling, the starting troops for most nations can clear the unrest caused by a battle in one turn, so theres no need to set the taxes below 100 at all.

That's still a wasted turn where you aren't getting another province.

[Saber Cherry]

I like to research Evocation first (well, depending on my mage paths; normally to level 1 or 2) just in hopes of getting heroic mages. I love them! Quickness, precision, research, stamina - they can be a huge boost, and are fun too.

I send out my first mages ASAP casting only evocations on that hope. Fire and Earth are the best, and often become heroic... of course I usually get heroic strength, but often it works

Taxes: In my experience, 10% equals 2-3 points per turn, in low or neutral dominion for a province with low unrest. Thus, I set a new province with 13 unrest at 30% taxes.

However, that may be conservative (or based on an older version), as in my most recent game, provinces with very high unrest were cleared of roughly 33 unrest per turn with 0% taxes... and this was fairly consistent.

[Chazar]

Taxes/Unrest seems linear with a small random factor. Liga's manual addendum features a table which worked well for me (and subsumed the table I had built from my own experiences when I first played Dom2 - ahh, I hated this paperwork!).

Oh, and take one vote for the faction of those who oppose patrolling. Patrolling occupies forces that cost upkeep and that could conquer other provinces instead to boost income. Furthemore it kills people and thus even more income. Growth is always a must have for me - and growth only pays off for initially crowded province.

[PDF]

Personnally my usage of mages in early battle is very dependent of the start spell I get : with Ermor BE for example I put asap a couple Thaums to BE my army. But with Mictlan I don't use any mage for some time, and for Man none other than cheap Bards before I get LB...

As for which kind of mage I rather stick to 1st or 2nd tier mages (Thaums, Mother of Avalon, Seraphs, Theurgs...) which often have sufficient magic for support. But there are exceptions, like Abysia who needs a Anath Dragon to get its Flares out.

So no definite tactics, it all depends on circumstances.