Powergamer starting tips

[themendios]

Was pimping this game on another forum and accidentally wrote a long effortpost about how to start a game "right", thought I'd share it here since this forum got bisected recently.

For the record I always play Tyrant Old Faith.

Tips, in the order they occurred to me:

• Even though it will bore you probably when you do it 2-3 times, do as much as you possibly can before taking your first stronghold - you won't be able to research and will be stuck with tier1 units plus whatever you can scrounge up via quests/hero joining but take over everything but Wales/Saxon and the 2 stronghold quest targets.
  
• You do this because once you take over the first stronghold events will start to trigger than will be very hard to keep on top of, but until you take it over you are relatively free to move about doing whatever. Trying to have a full-scale war while dealing with province events and time-triggered events with even 2 armies is very fucking hard at first because you're broke and have crappy units(though if you stay on chapter 1 for like 100 turns you'll never have money problems)
  
• Take Virconium, not London because you get a little quest in that direction, plus in the inevitable war London is an OPM while Virconium has 4-5 armies.
  
• Finally when you take your first stronghold make sure you have 4 heroes (you will have to get rid of one of the 2 that you auto-get after taking it, i recommend Alymere) for 3 years after so you get a 3rd very good warlord (Morold, cav and unit leader) but he only appears if you have <5 heroes (learned that on forums after randomly getting him once because i booted one guy)
  
• research order:
  Slow (prereq)
  Area lore (+50% per skill level building bonus - this means the +10% hero exp/turn places become +15% etc up to lvl 4 at +30% per turn hero) - park Lucan on a research node for a while.
  Then get the 'province action' things and go around and do them at all your provinces
  
• After that upgrade your bowmen to master longbow and heavy foot to breaker elites, any other units are new units but those 2 upgrade the ones you have already
  
• If you have guys that don't match Christian/Old Faith its not a huge dealbreaker but if you have guys who don't match Righteous/Tyrant you will cheat yourself out of easy loyalty. Use them for quests and when you eat babies they get the same alignment shift you do.
  
• Curse of Shadows seems awesome but Lightning Bolt is much better upgraded, cherish it. Also do not forget to get the 'mana per kill in x radius'. After their dd of choice I always go for max.
  
• Expect to fuck up at least once and have to start over, I probably restarted like 4x just learning that shit.

Hope that helps, sorry if there's bad words or formatting - different kind of forum. Feel free to add your own, I am sure I missed a bunch of stuff (such as GET DAGONET NO MATTER WHAT)

 

[Kaiser Bill]

Some nice tips here, although I don't entirely agree with all of them.

Can I ask, is it really necessary to use duch a proliferation of foul language though? Maybe you want to edit it out before the forum gurus remove it for the use of language.

 

[Novacat]

I actually prefer Righteous/Old Faith because you get better army bonuses, and you can actually use the 'Knights of Guinevere' unit which is incredibly good.

•Take Virconium, not London because you get a little quest in that direction, plus in the inevitable war London is an OPM while Virconium has 4-5 armies.

I actually prefer London because Virconium's province influence massively overlaps with the Welsh stronghold, while London covers pretty much a huge chunk of Southern Britannia that none of the other Strongholds cover. In addition it makes the Stronghold-to-stronghold teleport that much more useful. Besides, other than the scripted Unseelie/Seelie/Christian attacks (which will hit you no matter where you locate) as long as you keep a garrison in your stronghold nobody will ever attack it.

•Finally when you take your first stronghold make sure you have 4 heroes (you will have to get rid of one of the 2 that you auto-get after taking it, i recommend Alymere) for 3 years after so you get a 3rd very good warlord (Morold, cav and unit leader) but he only appears if you have <5 heroes (learned that on forums after randomly getting him once because i booted one guy)

Morold is not really that great, IMHO. Kay is the best because not only does he get decent skills to choose from, he is mostly a blank slate. Although Brandelis is a good alternative for Old Faith since that lets you get Sanctuary.

•Curse of Shadows seems awesome but Lightning Bolt is much better upgraded, cherish it. Also do not forget to get the 'mana per kill in x radius'. After their dd of choice I always go for max.

Meteor Strike is even better, more damage and bigger AOE, although only Merlin gets it. Fully upgraded it can erase an enemy unit off the map, or if you manage to force the enemy's army through a chokepoint, you can wipe everything in one stroke.

 

[themendios]

I actually prefer Righteous/Old Faith because you get better army bonuses, and you can actually use the 'Knights of Guinevere' unit which is incredibly good.

I just like tyrant because Gerald and Morold are great. Plus I greatly prefer torture over releasing because torture usually kills them and if you release them they end up with a new army and one thing I don't care for is chasing down every tiny army once I wipe out the main resistance.

I actually prefer London because Virconium's province influence massively overlaps with the Welsh stronghold, while London covers pretty much a huge chunk of Southern Britannia that none of the other Strongholds cover. In addition it makes the Stronghold-to-stronghold teleport that much more useful. Besides, other than the scripted Unseelie/Seelie/Christian attacks (which will hit you no matter where you locate) as long as you keep a garrison in your stronghold nobody will ever attack it.

The thought there is that it's easier to manage war with Virconium in chapter 1 because you don't have timers running down and/or multiple wars going on, I agree with your sentimement though.

Morold is not really that great, IMHO. Kay is the best because not only does he get decent skills to choose from, he is mostly a blank slate. Although Brandelis is a good alternative for Old Faith since that lets you get Sanctuary.

Morold is superb for infantry/cavalry leader, plus he starts with decent stats all around. His only weakness imo is the Dismounted Knight but if you stick him on a inf unit with Roads he's a terror. I don't disagree Kay is better but Morold is damn good.

Meteor Strike is even better, more damage and bigger AOE, although only Merlin gets it. Fully upgraded it can erase an enemy unit off the map, or if you manage to force the enemy's army through a chokepoint, you can wipe everything in one stroke.

Thats all true but like you said only merlin gets it. If you push your first sage through the Seelie 2-year thing and get Dagonet you can have 2 blasters pretty quick, I got another one but I forgot who!

Basically ran 2 armies once everything got up to speed, 1 with 4 sages led by Dagonet with mostly weird units like wargs etc because they're fast as hell and just have the sages run around blasting, then the other one all champs led by Morold, after I got Roads I ditched everything but Raven Guards and a handful of Deepwood Archers for when I can't get to them.

I actually used Kay as a unit runner with max leadership and area lore, he'd recruit armies and have them up and running while paying nearly nothing.

 

[Mithelemir]

"research order:
Slow (prereq)"

I must disagree with this item wholeheartedly. Although Slow, Freeze, and Venomous Curse spells allow you to buy your armies time (i.e, are handy when you mess up dramatically), the mastery of properly managing your army formations (read: engaging your enemies in an organized manner, at your terms) completely offsets the need to slow the enemy down. Critically, unlike having to invest four points per hero in each of these spells, the tactical knowledge in your head is entirely free. Since your post focuses on power-gaming, learning to keep your units compact, efficient, and deadly stands as prerequisite to minimal losses and maximum army progress in terms of both experience and plot advancement.

--M

 

[unmerged(1133)]

The are lore works only for the XP gained but not for the research points neither for quest generating (at least it was so several months ago; maybe they fixed it at last).
But at the same time the XP gaining thingy is messed - the tutorial (or the manual, not sure) tells a hero should be able to get to level 23-25 for the whole campaign; due to the XP gaining thingy mess my heroes were at level 65+ or such.
Also if you have Righteous/Tyrant guys you usually can keep his loyalty with artifacts/wife/fiefs AND/OR you can torture/release the enemy heroes. Every release increases the loyalty of the good heroes and every torture increases the loyalty of the bad guys. Besides the loyalty depends on the Righteous/Tyrant spread and is the permanent as long as the spread does not increase. So it is easy thing to send the opposite morale guy on couple of quests to decrease the spread. You just need to be careful.
Curse of shadows is great to kill the pesky archers (besides the magic resistant archers - but no magic can kill them anyway).