Guide: Some basic notes on expansion

[parone]

krepters, im with you. i can't see how people get out of the gate so fast. they do, but i can't duplicate it. there simply is never enough gold. and i prefer ulm, who has cheap units, and i almost always go O/P +3.

of course, i absolutely suck. so there is that...

[rdonj]

It's actually very doable to start a second fort on turn 3, if you overtax sufficiently or use cheap enough expansion or etc. Certain nations can pull off 3 forts by year 2 more easily than others. They are generally giving up something to do this. For example I did a quick test game earlier with one nation where I had 12 provinces by the fall of year one with one fort almost built (no lab/temple though) and two more building, and the ability to build another fort every turn after that if I wanted. The tradeoff? My starting army was patrolling my cap from turn 1 onward and I had no mages researching yet. So it's about tradeoffs. What do you need to lose to make this work? Is it worth it? Is it something that I can do reliably? Can I expand with smaller armies? Those are the questions you need to ask yourself.

[SsSam]

Originally Posted by parone

krepters, im with you. i can't see how people get out of the gate so fast. they do, but i can't duplicate it. there simply is never enough gold. and i prefer ulm, who has cheap units, and i almost always go O/P +3.

of course, i absolutely suck. so there is that...

You know.....the easiest part of the game to play around with is the first 12 turns or so. You might want to invest the time to play around with different scales/pretenders and figure this part out.

A good start doesn't assure a win, but it sure makes winning easier.