What am I doing wrong

I know it can be hard, I would love to give focus pointers, but I just need to spent a few minutes (yearh right, couple of  hours when I forget time) looking through the startup to get all the ideas fresh... I was thinking of putting together a gameplay guide, and would love all silly kind of questions you stumble upon as you are playing the game, from your new eyes!

Also, the most important notion, what faction are you playing? This can change things.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

The basic strategy I use is this:

1) From the start you should be out looting stuff -> exploring -> fighting with your heroes (in that order). They should be doing so without grouping with another champion (summoned creatures or trained units are fine). If you have two champions in the same army they get half XP, even less if you have more champs.

2) Your research should be into civilization in the start. The goal is anything that gives you Production, then Food. Stick to the lower techs. Then, after you have maybe 4-6 techs in Civilization, you should branch out to either warfare or magic. I choose which one depending on what resources I have. Lots of metal and production? Go warfare. Lots of shards and crystal? Go magic. Research Trading if your empire is large and you are having trouble covering it all.

3) The first thing you'll want to build is a pioneer. The moment you find a spot you can build a city in, send the pioneer over and put down a city. As long as you can see any settlable location, you should be building a pioneer and getting it to that location. This will give you the starting 3-4 cities needed to compete against other factions. When you're not building pioneers in a city, you should build stuff in this order: Production-boosters -> Purpose -> Pioneers/Troops -> Food. With Purpose I mean what you decide each city is for - a fortress should get things like training yards. A Conclave should get research boosts. A Town should get Gildar boosts.

4) When your cities have their first primary Purpose improvements done, you can start worrying about capturing all the world resources around with pioneers that put down outposts.

5) By the time you meet other factions, you should be looking at a level 6-8 sovereign with a lot of good equipment from loot. Your pioneers should have connected all your cities together through the zone of control (reduces unrest in cities). You should be just about ready to start mass-producing the first crappy military units. Do that. AI fears military power and attacks economic strength with no backup.

Thanks for the replies - I can already see improvements I will make to my approach. The first being not having an army of champs *blushes with embarassment*

Hire any champ you possibly can. Buff sovereign and champs with spells in the strategic view.

Heavenfalls' advice is very good, but it does not tell you what to do about the dragon/shrill lord/drake that stomps your city on turn 50-100.

In my opinion, this happens at this point of the Beta because of bugs in the monster A.I. The developers are working on it, but right now, as a player, there is not much you can do if you have the bad luck to attract the wrong kind of attention early on.

"Not much" is not the same as "nothing".  I have posted quite a few play-throughs (they are all linked from the last one), and in every one of them, you can see how I cleanse my homelands between turns 50-100.

The problem is that most of these tactics have been balanced out into mediocrity.  They still work, but they require a lot more knowledge about the game to pull off.

Two of the strategies that still work:

A) Fortify + Dodge + Blindness

1. Play a race with Krax blood.  You can customize it with "Lucky" for extra effectiveness.

2. Get a Death Disciple capable of casting "Blindness"  Boost her penetration (spell mastery) as much as you can.

3. Train a hero or unit with high dodge. That is, either a sovereign/champion with monk robes, lucky skullcap, a shield and the dodge line of traits, or a trained unit with the balanced, lithe and arcobat traits, and a shield.

Attack the BigBeasty(tm) with the dodger, the dazzler and any ranged damage dealers you have.  Avoid the BB until the dazzler gets "Blindness" to stick.  Move the dodger next to the BB and fortify.  Chances are, it won't be able to hit you much.  Use all you got to kill the BB before it gets lucky against the dodger.

B ) Frozen + Slow + High Initiative damage dealer

1. Get a Water Disciple capable of casting "Freeze" and "Slow".

2. Train a hero or an unit with extreme initiative. A warg mount, the "Quick" / "Tactician" / "Swordsman" line of traits, a quick weapon and the armor of the gladiator will help you achieve that.

Cast "Freeze" on the BB while it's in your sphere of influence. Attack it with the dasher and the freezer. Avoid it until the freezer gets "Slow" to stick. Observe the turn list, and wait for the dasher to get to act twice between the actions of the BB.  Dash in, cut it, dash out.  It has been frozen, so it will not be able to reach the dasher.  Make sure you don't get cornered, and eventually the BB will go down.

and of course you always have

C) Master scout

Play Tarth or a race with master scout.  Your units and building will be somewhat safe from wandering monsters, if not from wildland dwellers.  But seriously, you should never settle anywhere close to a wildland.

also, some people recommend the mystical option

D) have enough trained troops to overwhelm the Big Beasty

Those people are better players than me, because I cannot pull it off without crippling myself in the long run.  Let them explain it

@Tuidjy - Make a strategy guide and we will petition to get it stickied. Your advice is sound.

The game is still being balanced.  Option B may have been nerfed in .984, and there are people calling for a nerf to options A and C in multiple threads on page one.  I think that it is premature writing guides just yet.  My advice works in .982 and probably works in .983  Beyond that... ask Ceresa.

By the way, the above list is not exhaustive.  There are other combos that work - plate  + stoneskin +gift of iron, shrink/growth/etc.., mega damage from magic.  I was just listing the stuff that works REALLY early.  By turn 100-150 there are many ways to deal with more or less anything.

Like Tuidjy said a soldi Sov build is a Krax with Death 2, Water 1 and wealthy. You can blind, slow, fortify, cast inspiration on cities, buy heroes and after you research civ and production, you can rush pioneers and important buildings.  

Oh, and dragons and other big monsters pretty much kill all trained troops in one hit, I would recomend not wasting the resources and time needed on trained troops on dragons.  But, trained ranged units can be helpful if you have a champ to tank it like Tuidjy described.  Especially the frost staff mages vs a red dragon.

One thing you can do with dragons who are wandering near your cities is kite it away.  Move a unit close to the dragon, but not right next to it, and the dragon will tend to walk toward the unit, then move the unit one space away and the dragon will follow.  Now, they will only kite for so far, and you will have to chase them and kite them again.  I tried once to kite one to another faction city, but didn't work.  But I did use this to keep a city safe until I was able to deal with the dragon.

Told you I would forget time

I did find out what I needed to do to make my video recording tool work "properly" in Elemental All I need to do is grab a mic and some courage

The other players stated some really good advice, and all I can think about is find an opening tech-line that you are comfortable with...

That said, your sovereign should NEVER idle in a city, and NEVER pick path of the Governor unless the hero choosing it is severely crippled or one of the crappy random heroes (If you don't know who those are, then just pick something more worth-while like path of the defender.

Get used to the quirks of tactical combat, and the monster behavior, most monsters ignore you until you trample they're zone of control.

gtg now, video might come later.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Started a new game and doing a lot better thanks to the advice on here. Eternal gratitude. Just when you think it's going so well...an invasion of corpse spiders - wa - wa - waaaaah (on a muted trumpet). I have a few crap champs that I can tool up and throw at them to clear them - so no worries.

I am currently advertising for a new team of explorers. The team in my employ at this time seem to like exploring the same area over and over, there's an unexplored vista waiting to be mapped just past the obsidian golem there - I think they're scaredy-cats.

You are doing nothing wrong as I'm experiencing the same, simply put, the AI players are given considerable advantages, in other words, the AI is cheating like hell. To give an example: In my last game, after loading an earlier save I had created a few turns before, as I ended the turn, a message popped up saying that an AI player had built some achievement. Since I had already played that very turn without getting that message, I wondered how the AI managed to do this. So, I loaded an even earlier save, and as I ended that turn, I got the message once again. So, the AI doesn't seem to be subject to the same restrictions as the player, it is systematically given considerable advantage. This may be not be a necessity to make it competitive, but experiencing how it is done in game is, in my opinion, really annoying. When I had the same happen later in the game again (a different achievement), I was so annoyed that I stopped playing the game.

Yes, there are all great ways to try.

A good start to learn is always take master scout. Take it and never look back, once you know how things work alot better you leave it and cope without it. Unfortunately things are constantly getting changed and nerfed so what works now may not work later. My personal use is dodge and blind, a great combo. I expect it to change alot tho.

Basically you need to try and think ahead and min/max to win the hardest fights as early as possible. So what do you have/like to use that works well together?  What are they vulnerable to (ie sometmes you can hit hard with elemental attacks or blunt attacks).

Oh and the game is really RANDOM, as in, sometime you just get shafted big time, a really early dragon attack, relesed by the AI and wonder past two of his cities to wreck yours. It just makes you pull your hair out. 

I have had a lvl 8 hero find nothing but junk ie have 10 herbs and a rusty boot in the inventory. I have had the same hero packing a boreal blade with his buddies packing an ignies longbow and a sledge. Its the same level of skill with the same playstyle, just luck that changes.

I hear what you're saying re: luck.  In my new game, I named my sov after my wife and ran a random spawn and got a great location and have some decent loot (that I will be able to use in a few levels) - and to boot she seems to be happy to let me get on with carving out a kingdom in her name  - good job I didn't pick the ex-girlfirends name..........

I would just like a comprehensive manual explaining the general mechanics.  I picked up the beta this past week, and I'm ignorant of a lot of things that would help me make correct decisions rather than, say, arbitrarily picking one building over another simply because I don't know exactly how the different bonuses affect me.  For instance, a quest reward is either a nice bow for my sovereign or a boost to my "reputation" -- or was it influence?  I can't remember -- and I'm thinking, "Why would I not take the bow every time?"

Actually, you should take the money every time  

300 Gildar can be used to rush buildings and can push an important city a dozen of turns ahead of where it would get by itself.  But you've missed your chance, the developers are reducing the reward for that quest.

As for the third reward, the influence can be used for a lot of things (20 is not much, though)

1. Some sides have specific uses for influence. Hiring henchmen, suborning enemy units to your side, developing mercenary camps...

2. When your side has high influence, you get better trade deals.

3. And the simplest use is to trade it for cash, resources or treaties.

The AI doesn't get advantages if you play on Normal or lower difficulty. Wonders can be rush bought for gildar. When you reloaded the game, the AI started anew and decided it would buy out the construction. Nothing wrong with that. Check the AI gildar amounts in the diplomacy screen before and after they get the wonder. If it is indeed cheating, that cheat is a bug. The design is for humans and AI to play on the same level. If you play on Easy or Beginner, you are the one cheating. That is fine for new players.

There are a few tech rush strategies that you will learn over time. The AI knows them well. One thing I like to do is have Water I to start and cast Inspiration for +1 Research on a city. This doubles your starting research power, which will allow you to get Knowledge sooner. Now you have 3 times the research of most factions. That is probably why they are so far ahead in technology.

Yea, the AI is NOT cheating on challenging or less, I am watching Kraxis struggling with monsters right now.  Actually, we all are, I had the entire center of my kingdom filled with 3 dragons(killed 2) and umberdroths(killed now) and Karavox has had at least two cities destroyed by monsters that I have been close enough to watch happen. 

Did you mean is not* cheating?

Oops, yea, I meant not cheating.  Although I do think there is something funny going on with their money (but they tend to run higher taxes than me) and the AI sovs do have far more level up traits than they should, but...I don't think they are cheating, just a bit buggy.

The point is, I'm not familiar enough with the underlying game mechanics to know which option would be best for me at any particular moment, and the reason for my lack of familiarity is that there doesn't appear to be a comprehensive game play manual available.  I'm not complaining too loudly at this point because the game is still in beta, but I do hope one is being prepared for release.

Yes, I'm aware of the in-game help, and I can always learn by playing and figuring it out as I go, but that is not sufficient in my opinion (and frankly, I hate figuring things out as I go.  I'm a big picture thinker.).

My let's play videos explain the game concepts fairly well. Once the game is released I will do some more to set players up with a basic guide.

I am eternally indebted to this very helpful community - my latest game is going great - not easy - but still good, after all there must be some struggle involved. Thanks for the advise and tips
I have one further question regarding henchmen - are they considered to be champions with regards to ow the exp is shared in a group?

No. They do not siphon the experience from your champions, and can actually boost it to insane levels via the "trainer" series of traits.  They are quite unbalanced, if you ask me

If your city has a lot of essence, city enchantments that add +1 fire damage/essence, +hitpoint/essence and +defense/essence to trained units will make even early units very powerful. For instance a basic militia unit built in a 4-essence(with scrying pool) city enchanted with 'heart of fire' will do almost twice the damage of a normal militia unit (5blunt+4fire vs just 5blunt). It makes early game easier, and since the units tend to survive fights much better, they gain levels and later are able to handle even tough opponents thanks to the sheer amount of HP.

Do you have a site  ready? I figure most of these subjects doesn't change much from today and I atleast will start typing stuff out from next beta.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej