MP Research strategy help

En Forcer · #1 July 8th, 2004, 08:53 PM

Hmm...I wonder about Tuna's strategy. All those mages while great at research will soak you on upkeep.

I typically go for a mass of druids because they are sacred (and I seem to find them all the time).

But also sages, witches, gnomes, alchemists, whatever random finds I can get.

National mages for some reason seem to be less cost effective for me so I only get just a few of them. Maybe it's just my situation I'm in for my current SP game.

To answer your question, I shoot for 10 dedicated researchers equiped with lanterns and quills by turn 30 or so. Sometimes it's just quills because fire mages are hard to come by (as Jotun). that's my early plan. Than I slowly up to 15 or 20 researchers and swap out the quills for skull mentors.

Teraswaerto · #2 July 8th, 2004, 08:58 PM

With certain nations, like C'tis and Caelum, I try to recruit a mage every turn in every fort. Most of these mages will be set to research. Doing this, I've managed to stay ahead of the pack in research.

Some nations & strategies are just better equipped for researching than others.

Schmoe · #3 July 8th, 2004, 09:20 PM

All those Skull Mentors, Quills, and Lanterns cost a lot of gems. 10 Skull Mentors is 100 Death gems. Usually by turn 30 I haven't even accumulated 100 Death gems, much less 100 Death gems that haven't been used for something else (Dark Knowledge, other items, summons, etc).

How do you manage such a strong commitment to research and still maintain an effective army?

En Forcer · #4 July 8th, 2004, 09:40 PM

Well my first priority is get some Earth weenie making Dwarven hammers. Then I have a dedicated forger for each school of magic. So within the first 20 turns I have at least 1 quill and 1 lantern being made every turn. It's slow but eventually everyone is upgraded and researching.

So my fire guy and air guy, cranking out quills and lanterns, each equiped with a hammer, use less gems to make the goods. Capiche?

Schmoe · #5 July 8th, 2004, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by En Forcer:
Well my first priority is get some Earth weenie making Dwarven hammers. Then I have a dedicated forger for each school of magic. So within the first 20 turns I have at least 1 quill and 1 lantern being made every turn. It's slow but eventually everyone is upgraded and researching.

So my fire guy and air guy, cranking out quills and lanterns, each equiped with a hammer, use less gems to make the goods. Capiche?

So you plunk down 40 Earth gems in the first 20 turns for a chance to save 1 air gem on each quill and 1 fire gem on each lantern? So in 20 more turns you have recouped your cost, after spending a total of 80 air, 80 fire, and 40 earth. It shifts the cost around a bit, but it still doesn't get around the fact that it's a huge investment of gems. I guess maybe I'm not site-searching effectively, but I rarely seem to have the sort of gem income to support those costs.

En Forcer · #6 July 8th, 2004, 10:24 PM

Mmmm....a little different than that.

1st forging = 1 dwarven hammer 20 earth gems
2nd forging = 1 dwarven hammer at 15 earth gems
(earth weenie gets 1st hammer so all stuff is now 25% off)

The quill drops to 3 air gems I think?

But the lantern drops from 10 fire to 7.

I TRY to get a dwarven hammer built first...but if I start a game and don't have a bunch of earth gems then obviously I pay full price.

Mind you, I don't statistically track gem usage or effeciency. There are better ways to do this. But during all this I'm probably fighting a 2 front war and using up huge amounts of gold on troops (and believe me I alchemy A LOT).

So that's pretty much it....

Cohen · #7 July 8th, 2004, 11:27 PM

I'd never forge Quills, since 3 ResPoints are too few for 5 Air Gems.

Skull Mentors are good only for certain Nations, while Fireless Lanterns are very good.

Usually many players goes for Magic Scale too, that is a far better enhancment than forging research items.

In a long stand a bonus research for every mage will prove very useful, not to count that depending on Nation enemies fighting in your dominion will lose 1 point in MR (this is good especially against Undead Ermor, or if you count on mass Soul Slay or such things).

In the firsts turns try to get the best mages you can since you need to unleash your Pretender with spell buffs asap to get provinces (so more gold, to better mages).