PBEM game: The first step (Running)

[Ironhawk]

RibbonBlue said:
Great my luck is just going great. The independts around me are all Milita/longbowmen/heavy infantry/crossbowmen/knights.
Theres also a druid province and barbarian province.
All my provinces have knights. I saw one province that had milita+longbowmen, I go to conqure it with my army. 4 Knight commanders and 3 knights!!!. The druid province I am attacking will probaly contain darkvines. My luck is just going great!!!

Sorry for the slow reply. RibbonBlue as Man you have a very strong selection of national units with which to defeat the indies threatening. I will run down them and just make some quick comments, some of which have already been covered in the thread.

Barbarians: Man LOVES barbarians. They have barely any prot and arent particularly fast. Build about 20-30 longbowmen, set them way in the back of the field and Fire Closest. You will tear them to pieces before they even reach your men. Bring a set of spearmen or other chaff and set them to Hold and Attack if you feel you really need it.

Druids: Another indy type that is favorable to Man. Again, just mass up your longbowmen and this time set them to Fire Archers. The woodsman will have to move forward to get into range of your longbows (if they have been placed farthest possible back!) so they wont even fire first. Your longbows will slaughter them in 1-2 volleys and they will flee. Then the blowpipe guys will be in range and the same will happen to them. Darkvines could pose a problem, I dont recall thier prot. Maybe bring some chaff to tie them up while the longbows go to work on them. You might also get some lucky arrow hits on the druids themselves which could cause a rout.

Knight Provs: These are tricky. I will list off a way to defeat them here but it requires a bit of subtlety to get the tactical placements just right so I highly recommend you put off attacking knights until later in the game. Anyway, the trick with Knights would be to bring 1) chaff and 2) knights of your own. Put the chaff up front, set to Attack Cavalry - these guys will all die, but they will use up the Lance attack. Somethign cheap (with shields in this case, since enemy has bows) and use enough of them so that they wont rout if a couple die to arrows in the first 1-2 turns before the knights can kill them. Then have your Longbowmen set way back and on Fire Cavalry. Probably you wont kill any, but you might wound one or two, which can be the deciding factor with a small squad. Then have your knights way back as well with Hold and Attack Cavalry. So they will jump into action once your chaff has eaten the indy lance attacks and Lance the enemy in return.

[RibbonBlue]

Cool, thanks alot this really helps. I just slaughtered a mass of barbarians. The knights will fall soon hopefully.

[Alneyan]

I would stay away from the knights for now, at least until you have taken care of weaker provinces. If the knight provinces are within your territory, you should be able to take care of them later on, preferably without losing a lot of troops. For now, I would focus on trying to slaughter those weak independents, unable to fight off a storm of arrows (you can win such battles with no losses with a bit of luck, and losses should be low). Then again, I usually leave the task of clearing the knights to my Pretender, so I may not be the best advice in the world.

Turn 5 has run, and I have sent a general mail. As usual, please let me know if you did not get the general mail.

[sushiboat]

Turn 5

Arcosephale and Marignon announce their prophets. Man hired Ferdinando's Footmen, and Machaka renewed its contract with Fordo Boggit.

Machaka gained a fourth province to keep its lead. Arco and Ermor each conquered a third province. Pangaea now has its second province.

[Shmonk]

Doh! This is going to make for a long day for me. Again, I made the mistake of checking the forum at work. And see that the only mention of Marignon is my prophet being selected. Wasn't there anything else noticable? No other prophets for Marignon unveiled themselves in Machaka or Ermor or Man, to rally against the false gods that are worshipped there? Didn't the multitude of sacrifices I made to my beloved god get noticed? I mean, that was a LOT of cows to ritually sacrifice. Though it should be okay, I'm making my capital citizens become vegans, so they don't need the meat anyway. So I'll double the sacrifices next turn.

[En Forcer]

The goddess herself brings the word to the heathen indies...behold! ...And mercs make good chaff.

Here is a question for the more advanced folks on this game-I find myself alchemizing gems to make just enough gold to get that last unit. But I'm hearing arguments that you should hoard gems and just forego the purchase. What is the thought in regards to this? What I did was alchemize 8 pearls to fire gems which I then sold for gold so I could afford a mystic. Am I making a big mistake or is this a shrewd move?

[Shmonk]

Ok, this could be a newbie question, but I didn't know you could alchemize astral to anything else (like fire or earth) so you could then alchemize those to gold if you want. How do you do that? Is it specific to a certain race/item, or am I just missing something on the Alchemy interface?