#503 - The Choosing 2nd Beta

[Ruingurth]

BL

I am having an issue with recruiting. All other kingdoms can recruit turns 1-4 thru pop centers, I cannot. It is now turn 4 and I still cannot recruit as all of my companion brigades require at least 1 veteran kingdom or a Marshall to recruit. It seems a little unbalanced to me.

Matthew

[Jumpingfist]

BL

I am having an issue with recruiting. All other kingdoms can recruit turns 1-4 thru pop centers, I cannot. It is now turn 4 and I still cannot recruit as all of my companion brigades require at least 1 veteran kingdom or a Marshall to recruit. It seems a little unbalanced to me.

Matthew

RD should have the same problem.   seems you must attack and take losses just for a chance to recruit on turn 4.  perhaps the bats should require something you can do with what you start the game with.

[unclemike]

BL

I am having an issue with recruiting. All other kingdoms can recruit turns 1-4 thru pop centers, I cannot. It is now turn 4 and I still cannot recruit as all of my companion brigades require at least 1 veteran kingdom or a Marshall to recruit. It seems a little unbalanced to me.

Matthew

RD should have the same problem.   seems you must attack and take losses just for a chance to recruit on turn 4.  perhaps the bats should require something you can do with what you start the game with.

I think both Great Bats and Wyverns have the requirements of a captain plus one veteran kingdom brigade which could occur after the first attack. Then recruit up to the max of 10 GB and 5 WY in that group and transfer those to an inactive while recruiting more. You just need to get over that initial hump which could happen after your first battle then the dragon groups could be fairly large compared to the others during turns 5-10.

[Ry Vor]

NE

I went about getting my region differently.   Took the city and traded for a town and village in my region.  I used a total of three emmies.  Two on the city so I could get the production sooner and the other to take the village.   The other town I moved my 1NE and summoned a skeleton brigade to put me at 7k vs PC with my 1NE.  My 2NE was to far away to help.   So I also got a boost from issuing 240 order as part of my trades.   This made for a lot of income in the early turn that allowed me to do things like build temples and hire /promote 2 HPs for use on turn 4 and at the same time raise wizards and production of my PCs as knowing I was close to taking the region I raise food at my city which is now paying dividends in the winter months also raised gold at my capital and maybe some other places along with raising a p2 to p3, p1 to p3 and a p1 to p2 and 1 right of magi.   I had so many extra orders since my groups were staying home and not splitting/combining to search for PCs.  Also not using a lot of gold moving and taking PCs with Emmies.   I was hoping for a T2 region then a T3 but got the region on T4 but did not feel the economic crunch I normally do.   Now t4 going to t5 I am making a modest 44k gold in winter, knowing there are still 2 human PCs in my region but also have a p4,2p3, p2, p1 to help supplement my income if needed as I raise my wizards up.  Getting create gold at level 1 has helped.  Issuing the early 600 orders to help gain more census are already starting to return a larger long term investment.

Overall in the few games I have tested I have found getting the region to be easier than 2nd cycle but also more luck based due to random chances to find more distributed PCs and large random swings in census levels of PCs.   Also I have found the game does go slower due to less resources in each region.  I think this is a good kind of slower because it also forces players to be hungry for more resources as one region will not supply enough resources as the influence and armies build up.

Some good stuff here.  This is what I was hoping for:  adapting strategies to the new environment.

It seems the kingdoms that had either a city with a very high census, or those that traded PC's gained their regions quickly.  I may need to think of a way to restrict trading PC's as it is going contrary to the intent of the game to provide a longer opening phase of development.  Perhaps the #240 order cannot be issued until Turn 4 or 5.  I also need to refine the algorithm for maximum initial census by PC type.  Those two together should get it to where I expected it to be as far as early control of regions go.  In other words, I did not intend players would control regions on T3, and that T4 would be somewhat rare.  Normal might be turn 6.

Would like to hear from the players who have not yet posted, and the others who have - keep 'em coming.

Also, would encourage players to experiment with (you guessed it), recruiting Huns, Northmen, Zamorans, Westmen, attacking towns to gain experience to allow for recruiting Companions, try new spells, use the traits of your kingdom to advantage.

I didn't hear much on the Customizations chosen, and the thinking about that selection (Dwarves being one who did comment on that).

Is anyone other than The Gray Mouser finding that choosing orders from among the possibilities more difficult than in 2nd Cycle?

[VballMichael]

TY
Been too short on resources to try the recruiting, but I have done some artifact hunting and a couple of battles. They all worked fine, though the death rate for leaders at US is still a little high .

Question:  do the artifacts from the specialization choices (e.g., Valyrian Steel or Scrying Mirror) count toward an ESO that includes owning artifacts?

[Jumpingfist]

BL

I am having an issue with recruiting. All other kingdoms can recruit turns 1-4 thru pop centers, I cannot. It is now turn 4 and I still cannot recruit as all of my companion brigades require at least 1 veteran kingdom or a Marshall to recruit. It seems a little unbalanced to me.

Matthew

RD should have the same problem.   seems you must attack and take losses just for a chance to recruit on turn 4.  perhaps the bats should require something you can do with what you start the game with.

I think both Great Bats and Wyverns have the requirements of a captain plus one veteran kingdom brigade which could occur after the first attack. Then recruit up to the max of 10 GB and 5 WY in that group and transfer those to an inactive while recruiting more. You just need to get over that initial hump which could happen after your first battle then the dragon groups could be fairly large compared to the others during turns 5-10.

Is this really reasonable?   I have already found attacking PCs you loose 0-2% you loose brigades that can equal a real loss much higher.  You need to get a report to say at least 5% loss who knows what the real loss will be.  If you attack a village you have less chance to have your brigades advance, so need to attack a town.  So then the question is how many town could the BL attack reasonably before they have to many losses to attack more towns with there starting troops?  Since they can recruit nothing.   Or wait until turn 5 to get reinforcements to start the process over hoping to get lucky.  That of course is if they have not quit already because they now feel behind.   The BL already is at a disadvantage not being able to recruit humans the first 4 turn now they must pass a right of passage to try and recruit even there most basic brigade type giant bats.

[HeadHoncho]

I agree, it's not just a question of new tactics, it's a fundamental starting disparity that really makes me want to avoid the Dragon Kingdoms.

[gkmetty]

NO

The Nomads were able to take their region early but it had nothing to do with trading pop centers. The Southern Sands has 1 city, 5 towns and seven villages or a total of 21 population points. The NO start with a town and a village in the region and once I picked up the city I only needed a few extra points to gain regional control. All of these extra points came from villages as every town in the region starts controlled, one being controlled by the humans. I was able to use my low level emmies to pick up villages and I was lucky that my 1st and 2nd groups landed on villages, and had the strength to take them.

The Sands in this game are a shared region and I must now turn the city over the other occupant, this was our shared region agreement to avoid conflict. I should maintain control of the region but it will be very close.

By reducing the number of pop centers in a region it has increased the importance of city control while making it easier to gain regional control. Of course resources are much more scarce.

Perhaps a change in resource distribution could help. I dont know how hard it would be to implement but by increasing pop-center numbers back to the level of 2nd cycle, and maintaining the 2nd cycle population standards, while reducing resource production from each pop center you could achieve the slower region control while still maintaining the reduced resources it seems you had hoped to achieve.

Using the Sands in this game as an example, with an additional 2 or 3 towns in the region I would have been delayed by at least one additional turn and likely two turns as I would have had to wait for my emmies at the city to complete before I could move them to the towns, assuming they could be reached directly.

In summary: by reducing the number of starting emmies for the kingdoms and then restricting movement it seems it should slow early development but then by reducing the number of pop centers it made it easier to gain regional control. By returning to the number of pop centers per region as in 2nd cycle but buy reducing the amount of resources per pop-center, early development should be slowed while resources will still be more scarce then in the 2nd cycle. This theory should also reduce the importance of "swapped" pop centers as they will be a smaller percentage of the overall number of pop centers.

[HeadHoncho]

By the way, not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but I did want to note... the free recons that some Kingdoms receive of their own pop centers appear to trigger prior to the time that neutral pop centers become controlled by someone who takes the region. I would think it would be better to have the free recons occur after that time, but that is just an opinion.

[Jumpingfist]

Great detail GKMetty. I tried to mention the reducing emmies and PCs was in effect the same for taking control in the alpha but did not offer the solution to keep PCs the same but reduce resources. Removing the 240 order for a set amount of turns would do nothing, there are other ways to trade.