Helheim - lets burn some rubber

[chrispedersen]

BTW I don't consider 15 provinces by the end of year 1 rocket fuel. 15 is exactly my target for a nation acceptable to play in mp with an expectation of a chance at winning.

[Redeyes]

The law of probabilities would dictate that a nation could lose even if it made stronger decisions every turn.

One data point is hardly enough to make a fair judgment...
Can I guess that Vanheim got some important research done before you?
That's usually a game winner.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

BTW I don't consider 15 provinces by the end of year 1 rocket fuel. 15 is exactly my target for a nation acceptable to play in mp with an expectation of a chance at winning.

If you actually read what I posted, I very clearly indicate your initial expansion with this build is intended to be "respectable but not flashy enough that your neighbors are talking about ganging up on you" (and 15 provinces, as mentioned is at the lower range of what I've managed in my tests). Clearly you're not going with the full court press for your initial expansion, you could fairly easily double that expansion if you didn't heavily invest in early site searching, castles, and an awake non-expansion pretender - but then you'd obviously be pursuing a different strategy. This is actually a pretty good illustration of why I think it's silly how much tunnel vision people get - investing in a blistering initial expansion is a poor use of your resources if you're trying to use the strategy I lay out here. Its perpetually surprising to me how badly even most vets seem to be at assessing the real power level of their opposition - the most powerful (defined as most likely to end up winning) nation is often not the one with the most provinces.

You can fairly easily assess the raw power of a nation by looking at its income levels, but the applied power is a function of raw power multiplied by leverage....and leverage is everything from research and castle count to their available troops, magic paths and upkeep. A frequent component of conversations is how some nations are more or less predisposed to be a late game power...yet more often than not its the guy who is leading in provinces who gets dogpiled on. Province count is almost totally worthless to consider in a vacuum, and if Abyssia, Pythium & Mictlan are all vying for second place as you pull into late game it's pretty silly to think that Eriu or Man is winning despite the fact that they're in a solid 1st place in provinces and income (silly in an abstract sense, obviously there's a lot more to consider than what the nation is).