Golden Era Discussion

[gibson]

Lets talk about the new Arco theme. I like the thematics of it, especially the Skeptiks and the Philosophers. The Icarids are especially cool too. The Myrmidons look to be quite solid HI (and look cool to boot). Wind riders are powerful as well (if insanely expensive).

Main limitations I can see is all the good units of GA cost a lot of resources; with the mandatory 1 sloth, this makes it very difficult to levy any significant number of quality troops. The peltasts and Cardaces get destroyed in combat rather readily (I haven't played much with Arco standard so I don't know how Arco usually gets around this, with Elephants I'd suppose). The new chariots seem good but are also extremely expensive.

The 50g Philosophers with 5 base research are awesome with a 3 magic scale. Combined with the versitile and powerful mystics, GA with magic 3 can probably research faster than just about anyone. However, the unpredictability of the Sage's magic picks makes it difficult to focus on a particular research goal unless you have a pretender-based strategy. Additionally, the seemingly weak initial military choices seems to suggest to me a SC pretender approach might work well, to grab the inital provinces needed to get things going. Mercenaries might be useful too.

Feel free to contribute any thoughts on how to make the most of this cool new theme; I'll be trying them out over the next couple days.

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by gibson:
The 50g Philosophers with 5 base research are awesome with a 3 magic scale. Combined with the versitile and powerful mystics, GA with magic 3 can probably research faster than just about anyone. However, the unpredictability of the Sage's magic picks makes it difficult to focus on a particular research goal unless you have a pretender-based strategy. Additionally, the seemingly weak initial military choices seems to suggest to me a SC pretender approach might work well, to grab the inital provinces needed to get things going.

I´d use the Great Sage (research +10) with them. Between the Great Sage and the Philosophers, your research will be insane!

[Endoperez]

What about a Cyclops and a rush to the Riches from Beneath? Cyclops could also be used as an early-game SC.

[gibson]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
What about a Cyclops and a rush to the Riches from Beneath? Cyclops could also be used as an early-game SC.

I was considering something along these lines. Riches is a level 6 spell, which is fairly advanced but not too bad (especially with the research potential of GE). I guess the real question would be if you could find enough gems to cast it and not have it dispelled. I'll have to play with that some later.

I tried a game with a Wyrm with W4 and Order 2, Sloth 1, Growth 1, Misfortune 1 and Magic 3. Started early expansion with Wyrm mainly, and by turn three was also working with a small army of peltasts and cardaces. Even with just Order 3, the light infantry of GE is so cheap that I couldn't spend my money fast enough (generally a bad sign). So I went mercenary heavy to aid expansion and by turn 15 I have 12 provinces (had 14 but Ryleh has just taken two), 60 RP and 564 income. This is with indy str 6 btw.

While it is an alright start, it is weak in gems (1F, 2A, 4W, 2E, 1S, 1D, 0N, 0BL income) and most of those provinces are poorly defended (and thus I have an angry Ryleh maruading through my backyard). I think a strategy that focuses on getting capitol adjacent provinces and then building a decent army/researching might be safer, since the military might of GE is somewhat questionable (though hordes of cheap peltasts/cardaces work better than I'd have thought).

I just tested using Skeptics (Yes I prefer the classic spelling).

While the army may or may not have it's benefits or pains, but the Skeptics definintely fill a much needed role. About 4 Skeptics will tear down a 6 Dominion in a temple/prophet province in 2 turns and drop it to 0. A few more Skeptics in outlying provinces and a decent army and suddenly it's not a war of magic, or armies, but of keeping you dominion. Unfortunately with the easy access to patrolling and it's sheer effectiveness against Stealthy +0 units, they won't see the light of day in MP unless there is a +Stealth item you could equip them with.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zen:
Unfortunately with the easy access to patrolling and it's sheer effectiveness against Stealthy +0 units, they won't see the light of day in MP unless there is a +Stealth item you could equip them with.

Good luck catching them with patrols when they can move around every turn.

As far as I can tell, the lowering of the dominion only affects the province they are in. And the patrol phase is after the enemy movement phase. So if you know they are going to be used against you (if the Arco player is playing GE) then all you have to do is have 10+ Normal Patrollers (Slingers/Militia work fine) or 20+ PD and it will catch almost every Stealthy +0 unit as they enter the province.

With the cost of GE's armies and their low production it's quite a bit more difficult than would seem to put up an army to match most other nations. Especially since they don't have much of a lower resource unit to fill the ranks. Unless you try using Slingers, Cardaces, PeltLast for the bulk of your army (Gogo Protection). With no access to a standard and the amount of men that die from any normal HI, the Ol' Chariots don't have shields so they get decimated by Friendly Fire from Javelins, it's a rough world for GE.

Please Note: I feel the theme is very nice; The Engineer alone makes you think about different choices for Castles, which in and of itself, is a great thing.

[ February 17, 2004, 04:57: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Maybe the best use of Skeptics in MP would be to move in with your armies to suppress your enemies' dominion as you conquer their territory. It's awfully hard to dominion-kill a human player who's entranched in his Last few fortresses usually, but maybe not with Golden Era.

All in all I think the new theme's troops rather suck because of the mandatory sloth, but they look so cool. Still in my tests I have a very hard time recruiting anything but peltasts.

That is what I spend 90% of my gold on in my tests. They do fairly well against things without tower shields. What kills me is the Chariots (which have good enough morale that you can put 10 of them in a squad and not have them rout, which is very nice) running into the middle of the fight, then getting mowed down by a wave of javalins. Since they don't have any sort of shield (...) they have no defense against them and get torn up.

I don't even want to talk about the Wind Riders, unless you have a decent Air blessing (7ish will do) the javelins mow them over if there are any left from their initial assult.

Can't seem to get enough Myrmidon's to really see any impact, especially since Chariots are right around the same Resource cost. And the Icarid fall into the same Category as the Wind Riders except they are economically feasible to throw away 5-10 on a chance to throw casters into disaray.

I kind of wish the Engineers had a build bonus ability, to say lower the cost of building a Castle by a % or the time to build by a %. (Yes, I'd like to try to build Fortified Cities everywhere, but it just doesn't work.)

As I said the Skeptics are great for nulling domain, good for driving into the heart of an enemy who relies on high domain, just can't do it without an army backing them, as they easily get chowed down by PD/Patrollers.

[ February 17, 2004, 06:31: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Zen:
What kills me is the Chariots (which have good enough morale that you can put 10 of them in a squad and not have them rout, which is very nice) running into the middle of the fight, then getting mowed down by a wave of javalins. Since they don't have any sort of shield (...) they have no defense against them and get torn up.

Yes, it seems Wind Guide and Arrow Fend are definitely must-haves for the theme. Can't see how to work around the lack of synergy of the various units without them.

I kind of wish the Engineers had a build bonus ability, to say lower the cost of building a Castle by a % or the time to build by a %.

Or I'd like to have them build some sort of special siege unit - give me Trojan horses please!

As I said the Skeptics are great for nulling domain, good for driving into the heart of an enemy who relies on high domain

It seems they also affect your own dominion. Might be an idea to go full sloth and deploy some Skeptics in your production centers to get an average production scale there, and stick to peltasts in the capital.