Guide: Some basic notes on expansion

[Fantomen]

There is no "norm" regarding either the size of expansion parties or overtaxing, you have to ask nation specific advice.

Many nation guides gives an more or less specified idea of how to expand with that nation. The actual method might be any of the following: good quality troops and good scales (sometimes combined with overtaxing), it may be sacreds, it may be a national summon (MA agartha), it may be an awake pretender, it may be some elite special unit, it may be elephants. Or something else. And so on.

Most of the time, pretender build plays a role in the expansion. Either by providing the scales or a bless or expanding itself.

Good expansion can also be achieved with "normal" scales and troops if you script cleverly and pick targets carefully. This is the hardest path to learn, but it has the advantage of freeing up design points for mid and late game priorities. My recommendation if you strive to learn this is to begin with a scales build and good troops, like a MA pythium scales build, and then shift down to a harder choice (like Man with neutral scales) when it starts feeling easy. When you can consistently win against a given poptype with a specific tactic, start to reduce the number of units you send to find the sweet spot where you can expand with as small parties as possible. Because the smaller you can make your expansion parties the faster you can expand, remember that you can always have two expansion parties teaming up for a tough indie.

The point is that you need to find the specific expansion strat for the nation you're playing. As for cash, obviously you cannot afford everything always, and there is a random element too. But the general gold supply is evidently enough to establish the standard I have proposed, since it is the expected performance in most MP games and has been for years.

The reason to strive for the suggested minimum of 12+ provs and 1 extra castle, in standard settings, isn't that it is some magical number or anything, but simply because that is what you can expect other players to achieve. And naturally you will be in a subpar position if you cannot match that. It's not required to always achieve that or even desirable for some strategies, but it is a good baseline to practice for.

But basically, you are asking a specific question without providing the specific details needed to answer, of which the first and most basic is what nation you want to play. It is possible to detail turn for turn how expansion and gold expenses looks like, but only on a per nation basis.

[krpeters]

I'm just trying to figure out the math here.

Your base province has a base income of 300 gold/turn. So by turn 10, you've received 3000 gold from it. The provinces you conquer provide considerably less, let's add 1000 gold for the sake of argument. So that's 4000 gold.

Average researchers are 150/gold. Recruiting 10 of them takes you down to 2500.

An expansion army is at least 500 gold. Let's say you make two of those. That gets you down to 1500.

I can see maybe starting a single castle by turn 10 -- if you wait for frills like a lab or temple until later. But three forts? I'm obviously missing something. That's why I asked about 200% taxation, or maybe +3O/+3P to get a tastey +30% income? Whatever you're doing, it's impressive.

Or maybe I'm being too stingy on my estimate of province income? Maybe I should up that to 2500 -- assuming 50 gold/province, 10 provinces would get you 5000 for ten turns, but it takes time to get them (you don't have them all at turn one) so I'm cutting that in half. So if I add that, I can see how you can get another castle or two started, but again only if you don't build labs or temples.