Note: will add in pic's soonish.
Game setup:
Map: Cradle of Dominion (comes with the game): 199 land and 22 sea tiles. Never played it before and it looks interesting with balance of land and water, and special types of tiles with resources.
Age: Early Ages (lots of magic, little iron)
Players: 14 total, all random (I got Ulm)
So, with Ulm, I will have versatile mages, and will also need to focus early research on smithing. The weak priests is something I will have to watch out for, as diseased units can easily cause major havoc in my realms. Research will be slow, however, as they really dont get good magicians (being barbarians, after all). One of my early goals will be to find a site that allows me to recruit good researchers.
With the size of the map, I decide to have my God start of Imprisoned to gain the bonus 250 points (will reduce early research, but should make up for it later on as this should be a fairly long game).
First thing I do is look into changing the Physical form off Demi-lich. With this nation, it might be good to march around with the army a bit, and a good physical form can be important. I decide to stick with the Demi-Lich though because I expect my god to primarily be researching, forging magic items, and casting ritual spells, not fighting. This form starts off with Death 3, 3 dominion, and is cheep to open up new paths of magic (which I will be doing). Below you can see my final form. Might have been nice to increase dominion a bit, but I can live with this due to the role I expect to use him for. I name him Bubba.
The only change off standard starting rules is I allow unit renaming. This is more of a convenience factor for me, as it allows me to name units with a special role in mind so that I dont accidently mix them up. For example, I expect you will see several mages with the name: researcher1, researcher2, etc.
Here you can see the world and my starting position in it. Rather nice, I think.
Lets look at our units that we can build.
For our Commanders we have the standard scout (which I hardly ever build) and the standard Warrior Chief.
The Warrior Chief isnt too bad, nice that he starts with 80 leadership, and has some pretty good armor. His Great Sword does good damage as well. Being stealthy likely means that if he looses a battle, he has a good chance of escaping even if it is into enemy territory keeping any of the magic items that he might be given. Overall, not bad.
Next is the Warrior Smith
These guys are interesting. They are good (although not great) warriors, and with a 40 basic leadership they will be able to move some good troops around as well. With their Forge Bonus, that means I spend 1 less gem when using these guys to make items. They get 1-2 random magic paths (earth, fire, water and air only) along with a base level of 1 in earth. Their research is poor, however, at only L9. I will likely use these guys a lot, but not initially. They also offer a resource bonus to the city they are in meaning I can recruit a lot of new warriors once I get a lot of these guys in a city but gold will always be an issue.
The next guy is the shaman. This will be our basic military magic unit & priest.
They get 1-2 random magic paths (Fire, earth, death or nature) along with a base 1 in earth, and they are L1 priests as well. A bit on the expensive side at 135 gold, and their research is so poor that I dont expect to use them except as mobile artillery bits.
Antlered Shamans round out our commanders.
These guys are interesting. I expect in the early game for me to get 1-3 of them, but they are slow to recruit (1 per 2 turns) and very expensive at 220 gold (but, when you think of it, it is only 110 gold per turn, which is less expensive than regular shamans and about the same as my smiths). They are sacred, which means that I will only be able to build them at my home base. They are at the low end (13) of what I would consider OK at researching. My plan is to build one of these guys first turn, and turn him into my disciple. I will then build a few smiths to do bulk research. Then, a few more of these guys or regular shamans, depending on circurmstances, to fill in the ranks of the army with some magic.
They have 2 earth and 2 forest, and a base 10% chance of getting 1 in fire, earth, death or nature. They also offer 20 supply, which means that troops with them in the army will get fed meaning less chance of disease when I have big stacks moving around a rather important feature.
I will look at the regular troops later on, but I have a mix of archers, and medium armor melee damage types. All are moderately expensive 10-17 gold each, and same for resources, so I wont be getting huge armies quick, but would expect my guys to be reasonably tough. My sacred Steel Warriors are good damage types, but at 28 gold and 17 resources each, dont expect me to be using them until the middle or later parts of the game.
Because I am seeking max my army early on to take over as much neutral territory as possible early on, I set my build queue to be 5 archers and 9 warriors, along with 1 Antlered Shaman. This maxes out my resources and gold without putting me into deficit, and actually allowing a slight surplus in gold.
I start out with 15 archers, 10 axe warriors, 1 warrior chief and 1 scout. I will leave my chief on home base this turn, as I have no idea what is around me. I set him to pillage this turn, to basically take and burn down my own home city presents, in order to find extra gold. As this is likely the only time I will pillage, I will have plenty of time to recover, and at this early stage gold is really important for building my army. My scout I move him southeast, towards the city with the harbor. I want to control access to the river crossings, and this is a major crossing close to my home base and also with access to the water tiles (a good and a bad thing all at the same time, depending on which sea nation, if any, is nearby). As the map isnt wrap around, I should be able to take out the neutral stuff to my north at my leisure.
I currently have 0 research, but I make sure to set my goal at 100% onto construction first thing. Magic weapons and armor will be my strengths, so might as well go that way first thing.
My home base allow me to gather 3 earth, 2 nature, and 1 death gem per turn. That is nice.
At this point, I really dont have much more to report. I will slowly take over nearby territories and expand, and see who is nearby that I might run into eventually.
Game setup:
Map: Cradle of Dominion (comes with the game): 199 land and 22 sea tiles. Never played it before and it looks interesting with balance of land and water, and special types of tiles with resources.
Age: Early Ages (lots of magic, little iron)
Players: 14 total, all random (I got Ulm)
So, with Ulm, I will have versatile mages, and will also need to focus early research on smithing. The weak priests is something I will have to watch out for, as diseased units can easily cause major havoc in my realms. Research will be slow, however, as they really dont get good magicians (being barbarians, after all). One of my early goals will be to find a site that allows me to recruit good researchers.
With the size of the map, I decide to have my God start of Imprisoned to gain the bonus 250 points (will reduce early research, but should make up for it later on as this should be a fairly long game).
First thing I do is look into changing the Physical form off Demi-lich. With this nation, it might be good to march around with the army a bit, and a good physical form can be important. I decide to stick with the Demi-Lich though because I expect my god to primarily be researching, forging magic items, and casting ritual spells, not fighting. This form starts off with Death 3, 3 dominion, and is cheep to open up new paths of magic (which I will be doing). Below you can see my final form. Might have been nice to increase dominion a bit, but I can live with this due to the role I expect to use him for. I name him Bubba.
The only change off standard starting rules is I allow unit renaming. This is more of a convenience factor for me, as it allows me to name units with a special role in mind so that I dont accidently mix them up. For example, I expect you will see several mages with the name: researcher1, researcher2, etc.
Here you can see the world and my starting position in it. Rather nice, I think.
Lets look at our units that we can build.
For our Commanders we have the standard scout (which I hardly ever build) and the standard Warrior Chief.
The Warrior Chief isnt too bad, nice that he starts with 80 leadership, and has some pretty good armor. His Great Sword does good damage as well. Being stealthy likely means that if he looses a battle, he has a good chance of escaping even if it is into enemy territory keeping any of the magic items that he might be given. Overall, not bad.
Next is the Warrior Smith
These guys are interesting. They are good (although not great) warriors, and with a 40 basic leadership they will be able to move some good troops around as well. With their Forge Bonus, that means I spend 1 less gem when using these guys to make items. They get 1-2 random magic paths (earth, fire, water and air only) along with a base level of 1 in earth. Their research is poor, however, at only L9. I will likely use these guys a lot, but not initially. They also offer a resource bonus to the city they are in meaning I can recruit a lot of new warriors once I get a lot of these guys in a city but gold will always be an issue.
The next guy is the shaman. This will be our basic military magic unit & priest.
They get 1-2 random magic paths (Fire, earth, death or nature) along with a base 1 in earth, and they are L1 priests as well. A bit on the expensive side at 135 gold, and their research is so poor that I dont expect to use them except as mobile artillery bits.
Antlered Shamans round out our commanders.
These guys are interesting. I expect in the early game for me to get 1-3 of them, but they are slow to recruit (1 per 2 turns) and very expensive at 220 gold (but, when you think of it, it is only 110 gold per turn, which is less expensive than regular shamans and about the same as my smiths). They are sacred, which means that I will only be able to build them at my home base. They are at the low end (13) of what I would consider OK at researching. My plan is to build one of these guys first turn, and turn him into my disciple. I will then build a few smiths to do bulk research. Then, a few more of these guys or regular shamans, depending on circurmstances, to fill in the ranks of the army with some magic.
They have 2 earth and 2 forest, and a base 10% chance of getting 1 in fire, earth, death or nature. They also offer 20 supply, which means that troops with them in the army will get fed meaning less chance of disease when I have big stacks moving around a rather important feature.
I will look at the regular troops later on, but I have a mix of archers, and medium armor melee damage types. All are moderately expensive 10-17 gold each, and same for resources, so I wont be getting huge armies quick, but would expect my guys to be reasonably tough. My sacred Steel Warriors are good damage types, but at 28 gold and 17 resources each, dont expect me to be using them until the middle or later parts of the game.
Because I am seeking max my army early on to take over as much neutral territory as possible early on, I set my build queue to be 5 archers and 9 warriors, along with 1 Antlered Shaman. This maxes out my resources and gold without putting me into deficit, and actually allowing a slight surplus in gold.
I start out with 15 archers, 10 axe warriors, 1 warrior chief and 1 scout. I will leave my chief on home base this turn, as I have no idea what is around me. I set him to pillage this turn, to basically take and burn down my own home city presents, in order to find extra gold. As this is likely the only time I will pillage, I will have plenty of time to recover, and at this early stage gold is really important for building my army. My scout I move him southeast, towards the city with the harbor. I want to control access to the river crossings, and this is a major crossing close to my home base and also with access to the water tiles (a good and a bad thing all at the same time, depending on which sea nation, if any, is nearby). As the map isnt wrap around, I should be able to take out the neutral stuff to my north at my leisure.
I currently have 0 research, but I make sure to set my goal at 100% onto construction first thing. Magic weapons and armor will be my strengths, so might as well go that way first thing.
My home base allow me to gather 3 earth, 2 nature, and 1 death gem per turn. That is nice.
At this point, I really dont have much more to report. I will slowly take over nearby territories and expand, and see who is nearby that I might run into eventually.