Golden Era Discussion

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.

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
Or I'd like to have them build some sort of special siege unit - give me Trojan horses please!

Wooden Constructs anyone?

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.

That would also take away your order. Hard decision; but I suppose you could. If you did take Sloth 3 (which also impacts your gold flow nationwide, though I suppose you just take Growth to counter it) you also lose your Order 3 and Luck/Misfortune in that production center.

More than likely I imagine I'd prefer getting 21% Gold while still being able to manufacture 10% less (or 30% if you take the big sloth hit).

I just tried making the All Powerful Pretender of Bless Effect Destruction, with all negative scales.

It's not going well, because skeptics don't null your domain fast enough, also makes you produce Skeptics non-stop at your capital as you expand. Though it's an interesting idea. You could be dominioned out fairly quickly using these scales. Might be a better idea to take Luck 3 and Magic 3 and try and keep the Capital to a positive dominion.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Zen:
That would also take away your order. Hard decision; but I suppose you could. If you did take Sloth 3 (which also impacts your gold flow nationwide, though I suppose you just take Growth to counter it) you also lose your Order 3 and Luck/Misfortune in that production center.

More than likely I imagine I'd prefer getting 21% Gold while still being able to manufacture 10% less (or 30% if you take the big sloth hit).

You could still pick Order+3/Sloth+3 and build castles and stack Skeptics in resource-rich mountain provinces. These provinces usually don't provide as much gold as farmlands (which are usually resource poor), so the income hit here would be pretty minimal I think (eg, say a mountain produces ~50 gold or less, you lose just 21% of that, ie at most ~10 gold/turn - not really a big hit).

Basically it's a trade for 80 design points vs a 4% income loss nationwide, the need to put extra Skeptics in your non-capital centers, and maybe a more difficult start due to the inability to raise troops efficiently early when you're limited to your capital - but to make up for that, these 80 design points might allow you to give more muscle to a SC, for example.

[tinkthank]

I love the theme, just yum, but I got turned off by the fact that *all* interesting units are capitol-based. It's worse than Mictlan! Yes, neato, but it is just a chore for me to schlepp them from my capital all over the world. Looks great, but the sole reason I dislike Mictlan is the capitol-dependence (or is it capital?). Well good luck and have fun with the philosophers!

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
You could still pick Order+3/Sloth+3 and build castles and stack Skeptics in resource-rich mountain provinces. These provinces usually don't provide as much gold as farmlands (which are usually resource poor), so the income hit here would be pretty minimal I think (eg, say a mountain produces ~50 gold or less, you lose just 21% of that, ie at most ~10 gold/turn - not really a big hit).

Depends on if you get those types of provinces and you can expand that early to do so. It's an interesting concept, hard to do initially and your start is fairly slow even with a SC pretender taking provinces alone (I used a Red Dragon).

Definitely a strategy that can be used. Though I don't know if it's overall better than base. I tried base scales (0 Order, 0 Luck) and got on the raw end of events. That might be the only consideration.

[ February 17, 2004, 08:12: Message edited by: Zen ]