Baalz' guides

[Baalz]

Sorry, my guides are all based on default settings, where noted (all the recent ones) using CBM. I'd also like to reiterate that I'd be a bit surprised and disappointed if people took what I wrote and tried to just apply it verbatim with no discovery of their own. People are always asking if its CBM or not, what the settings are, and pointing out that there's not enough points for the very specific thing I just laid out (because of a typo or an oversight on my part which doesn't really impact the idea). Thing is, each game (particularly MP!) is going to vary so much that a formulaic approach certainly won't work. I don't in any way attempt to give an exhaustive analysis of a nation and all the different ways it could be played with all the different settings in all the different scenarios you'll find yourself in. Obviously playing under hard research is going to impact some of the suggestions I make, sometimes it's just the luck of the draw and despite your best efforts you can't find the gems you need for what I suggest and instead have a pile of some other gem you'll have to decide how best to use. Sometimes, trying the same strategy you're going to blast through indies and pile up gold, sometimes you're going to be surrounded by heavy cavalry and dark vines and have a stunted growth, sometimes your capital is in high resource mountains, playing with indies at 9 will change stuff as well. Despite the fact that I often write from a perspective of "you'll do this then that" by necessity it's intended to really be suggesting fairly general patterns which are useful in different situations while illustrating some common situations through the usual span of a game. As is obvious from the response there are often dramatic different and effective angles on nations which didn't occur to me. Think of it, kind of like observing one specific game played by me with a running commentary of what thoughts were going through my head as I made my decisions - even I wouldn't be able to exactly duplicate that in another game.

[Edi]

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I didn't mean to suggest that your guides are The One & Only, Infallible Way of Doing Things. I have always treated them as suggestions (very good ones), but the writing style may sometimes give a little bit stronger impression of something than may be warranted by the specific circumstances.

The question about the default settings was just something that I figured suited this thread best of all, because all the guides are linked from here. And now everything can be compared to what the actual settings are on any given game. Such as the example of my own defaults, with indies 7 and magic sites reduced 1 or 2 steps from default most of the time.

Thanks again for all the effort you've put into the guides.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Sorry, my guides are all based on default settings, where noted (all the recent ones) using CBM.

I'd be surprised if anyone would write guides for anything but Default settings, without explicitly stating such. Independent settings especially really tamper with the precision often layed out for your first year of expansion - even bumping to 6 can have a profound impact on what you can or cannot do efficiently - and pushing it higher can totally marginalize some tactics altogether. I think that most guides are written from an MP perspective, where time and efficiency are critical, and settings do not vary wildly except in the more exotic setups - extrapolating them to SP means that you have to adjust to your own world, but gives you more flexibility, as you are under less of an "X provinces by turn Y or lose" sort of pressure.

Originally Posted by Baalz

People are always asking if its CBM or not, what the settings are,

Well CBM can dramatically change things. For example, in my Fomoria guide, my Lady of Springs went from 2W/1N for 125 points, to 1W/1N for 0 points. It's a large change that yields up additional options. I think most strats depend less on the vanilla/CBM distinction once in game, but pretender builds will vary greatly between the two environments.