Newbish question

[Endoperez]

I've used Ctrl to group my commanders, not Alt. Perhaps both work, or it's OS spesific?

To ungroup the commanders, hold control/alt again to remove them from the group.


If you are moving forces from many places into one province, press 'y' to give orders to units that will be there next turn. You can see and position all units except those that already are there. There is a minor bug that prevents you from repositioning troops that are already there, although you can give orders to them.


Sites with "enter for adventure" are dangerous. Try sending in expendable commanders like indy priests or something, see if they ever get lucky, and check out the opposition.

Luck scale: it's not known how good Luck is, exactly. I've tested it in several games with 9 provinces, total, and in these Luck nations generally got about as much gold as Order nations, in addition to the other events. The quality of the provinces had more effect on the nations' total amount of gold than what good scale they had taken.
The rumored break-away point is due to the fact that Order affects all of your provinces every turn, but Luck only gives few events. It was thought that the maximum was three events/turn, but I've seen four even in my 9-province test games. It's hard to test, because some spells cause bad events and you can't be sure the AI or an enemy player didn't cause some of the events you got in an actual game. Still, at least 4 and perhaps more events are possible per turn, but 6-7 are rare except in really big games and Luck will definitely produce less money than Order in those. On the other hand, those games last a long time and the gems you get from Luck would have added up quite nicely.

IMO, it depends from your nation. If you get lots of money early on to properly afford expansion and research and your first castle or two, Luck may be too unreliable. I often take Luck, even if Order might be better, because I like being lucky.



Short Guide to Horrors

Horrors come in several varieties. Lesser Horrors are ethereal and nasty. Horrors are ethereal and quite strong. Doom Horrors have fitting names like Eater of Gods or Maker of Ruins, and special abilities like Siege Bonus 400 and special weapons that negate "lucky" attribute and impose penalties on you. Dream Horrors were also added in a recent patch.

Astral spells can cause Horror marks, which attract horrors. Horror Marks can't be removed, but the horrors won't spontaneously attack you before you are marked multiple times, and even then they'll often be of the lesser variety. You can't see how strong your Horror Mark is, but there are several levels of it.

Blood has spells which can summon horrors, mostly in battles. Hellpower increases all the caster's magic paths by 2 (until the end of battle), but causes Horror Marking and summons horrors. Call Horror summons one, but the caster doesn't control it; instead, it attacks anything it pleases, probably something that has been Marked. Send Horror/Dream Horror can send the beasts to a remote province. They will try to kill whatever's there, but you won't get the province if they succeed.

The only simple way to get controlled Horrors is via Wish. You can wish for the unique Doom Horrors if you want to, but they have a good chance of attacking the summoner, and even if you get to control one it will disappear before or later.

[Zeldor]

Endo:

Heh, yes. Air conditioning is not working well enough here Hot!

[sector24]

Some SP tips:

After the independent expansion phase, each AI is going to look to go to war with at least 1 opponent in order to expand. If your borders are not well defended, it's going to be you. Entering a war makes you even more vulnerable, so another opponent will declare war on you, and another and another.

The AI will only declare war on you if it perceives the tangible gain of at least 1 province. It will never attack you if you have a reasonable defense on every border province.

So, the trick to surviving in SP is to put on a strong front long enough for the AIs to choose to attack each other rather than you. One way to do this is to put 21 PD on all your borders. However, this is an extremely poor use of gold, and does not work in multiplayer. However, for chokepoints, and provinces with 7+ neighbors, it might be worth it.

Another way to do this is to have a reasonably large army (40-100+ units) just walk along your border provinces. Large and imposing units seem to help, such as Hydras, Elephants, Troglodytes, etc. The goal is to look like a tough nut to crack, and eventually the AI will pick on a weaker neighbor.

Look at the army size graph. The nations with the smallest army are the most likely to be attacked. Sometimes having large numbers of ultra elite units hurts you here because you appear weak. If this is the case, build a ton of independent archers, woodsmen, crossbowmen, etc. just to boost your graph.

When you do get into a war, the easiest way to win is to force the AI to attack you on your terms (which it will). The best situation is a chokepoint, where you can pump the PD and put a large force to annihilate all attackers. That's rarely feasible, it's more likely that the enemy will raid you. Rather than chasing them around, your closest army should either go right for their castle (shutting down their production) or stand their ground in the most defensible location, while reinforcements from your castles move forward wiping out raiding parties.

You're going to lose a good chunk of cash from lost provinces, but a defensive approach is very powerful in single player. The reason being that the AI has a bigger army than you do, but once you destroy that army, they can't rebuild like you can. You simply have to outlast them, even if you lose a few provinces initially. When you kill enough raiders, what happens is the AI has almost nothing left other than what it can produce in the castle. Then you can take back all your provinces and start the offensive.

Hope this helps get you to the mid-game.

[chrispedersen]

Why coudn't you play a one person game.... by eliminating all rendom players... and build and emprie.. and see how many luck events you get. With no other players.. they should all be random...

[Wick]

Because the only player left is the winner - game over.

[chrispedersen]

I wasn't clear.

Human control (you) two nations. Start with 50 territories each or so.

Sice you won't be casting any spells... luck will be the sole cause of random events.

[MaxWilson]

It would take a while to accumulate 50 territories, which makes it kind of a tedious test to run. You may feel differently.

-Max

[Endoperez]

chrispedersen said:
Why coudn't you play a one person game.... by eliminating all rendom players... and build and emprie.. and see how many luck events you get. With no other players.. they should all be random...

I did my tests like that. All the nations were humans, and I had multiple nations at the same time to test various scale choices at the same time. I just didn't bother to conquer 50 or so provinces with everyone while writing down all events and marking down how much gold I've gotten and how much gold I've spent. I can start the game with 9 provinces for everyone, and then fast-forward for turn 30 or 40 or something and check out how much money everyone has.

[moderation]

You could just build a few SCs and attack the AI. A well equipped Cyclops or Prince of Death usually eliminates the AI nicely since it doesn't know how to fight them. But I guess that's almost cheating.