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Old February 27th, 2012, 04:29 PM

Zywack Zywack is offline
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Default Some beginner gameplay and strategies questions

Hello everyone,

I've learned about the game a few weeks ago, did a lot of reading on the two wikis and forum threads to get a good grasp of the fundamentals and I decided to purchase it. The game is mind-blowingly good and it's right up my alley (I wish I knew about it years ago) and I even convinced two friends to also buy the game. I'm currently only playing either solo or with my friends vs the AI but I'd be interested in playing multiplayer in the future: Even though I know I'll get absolutely demolished in the first few games (at least), I'd be more than happy to fight my hardest and learn.

I'm familiar with research, blessings, site searches, magic boosters items and opening new magic paths with spellcaster summons but there's some important things I don't really understand even with all the reading I've done.


---1) First turn expansion. I've seen some mentions about using a fighting-oriented awake god for first turn expansion. How do you do that, exactly? I've tried a few 2-minutes games to test it out, and the results were disastrous.
The wyrm died 2 times out of 4, Ice Dragon 1 times out of 4, and various titans 3 times out of 4, all that at default independant settings (5).
I could understand waiting until turn 2 for intel to see if there's a super weak independant province to send your god to and your army to another province, but I don't understand how you can expand on turn 1 without facing heavy risk of losing the game outright.


---2) Thugs in general. I understand the concept in general but I can't seem to get it effective in practice, or even know where to start really. I know that defenses like Luck + Etheral + Awe + Regeneration all stack but I can't seem to have it be "worth it" or "useful" in either of my games.

For example, as T'ien Chi, my biggest opponent is an absolutely huge Ermor so what I'm facing is mainly hordes of small undeads. My gems are currently being used to buy spell boosters so that my earth mages can use Blade Wind, for summoning cheap tanking units like corpse men to guard my archer cavalries or to summons creatures like the Naiad and Troll King to boost my forging/summoning capabilities.

I'd love to use a few thugs to help my battles and have some variety but I have no idea what I could possibly summon/equip that could actually help in a fight, even though I have access to all magic types except Fire. There's swarms of enemies so I need something (anything) that can kill multiple of them in one round. I can't get Fire Brands, and Frost Brand are useless. Awe is useless. Fear is useless (which scraps the majority of my current thug potential). I don't see anything beside Trample that could help during fights but it feels as if the gem cost/mage turns expended would be much higher than the prospective reward.

Is there any useful thug I can summon/equip to even remotely help my armies against the Elmorian hordes or should I just follow with my current short-term plan to use Dark Vines to tank for all my archers and priests and forget about equipping any battle commanders with anything beside Cauldrons of Endless Broth?


---3) Dominion Strength of 8+. I've read in countless places that a very high Dominion strength is critical. That amounts to the majority of design points of your god, though... Is it viable to protect your dominion territories in multiplayer with 4 to 6 dominion and priests preaching on your borders, or is it simply inviting dominion death even with multiple provinces remaining?


---4) MA Oceania land strategies / multiplayer viabilities. I was amazed at the fact that there were underwater nations and I love water + nature magics so I have a soft spot for them. I've read that Oceania is a weak nation in general and that the best "official" strategy is to just turtle in the water building clams. I can definitively understand the reason for that, but it's definitively not something I would enjoy playing... but I'm still reluctant on forsaking away my first love in anything else but single player.

My first game I focused more on expanding on land faster than underwater: With my SC God (I'll admit that the lady with the six dogs on her body maybe wasn't the best pick for this), amphibious units and the few good independent troops I could take multiple land territories rapidly, while Oceanian Tritons (great units for the cost) supported by a few Mermidon were sufficient to grab undersea territories for extremely few golds. To respond to early land aggression, I used some extremely early summons like Summon Animal (not efficient gem-wise but super efficient time-wise early game) with my SC to establish myself strongly.

Would a strategy or a variant like that be even slightly viable in multiplayer, or would I simply be facing certain game over by turn 10?
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