sjaminei

Join Date 10/2012

+24

Early game guide!

Lets make a guide to how to play the early game guys?

So you are starting out and is confused wtf to do.. no worries, Sjaminei is here to help:

#1;

First, Essence is good, production is good. Food is? Meh... We'll deal with that later. Get that production and essence going. Settle where the production and essence is high. (the blue stuff) Yay. First city! Build Pioneer. Then workshop/study/lumber thingie, whatever floats your boat. These are the buildings you want early on.

Did you pick water or earth magic? Maybe both? Awesome. Inspiration and Enchanted Hammers is the best early game enchantments for cities. You want your cities to produce hammers and research asap. Start researching restoration (for workshops) or civics if your Sovereign is wealthy. (rush buying stuff is goooood!) Oppression is OK at start too, if you are Death Specced and don't have Inspiration/Enchanted Hammers.

Now what? I have this sovereign and champion? What do I do with them? ITEMS! Lets get some PHAT LEWT. Split them up and pick items if you can be bothered. Put all armor on your champion, he will be tanking stuff, mobs are stupid that way. Found weathered shield? Great.. now your champion can really tank some hard stuff.

Darkling Shaman? Dark Wizard? Armor up your champion and press auto solve. Great XP! Fool around and beat those crappy mobs wandering about your next city site, and pick up LOOT. More armor, more damage, more HP. Get defensive specc on your champion so he can tank harder. Damage on your sovereign. (mage/warrior stuff you know.. ) Get some Potential and Trainer'ing going, alongside Endurance etc.

You cleared the next city site? Awesome. You didn't? Are there bad mobs lurking about? Build some overpower clubs/spears quick, and clear it. Tank with champion, move in for kill with your units. Move Pioneer in and settle, look for next site. Use enchanted hammers/inspiration on site for more research and production. Do you like to abuse? I do. Let your sovereign tank if he does bad damage. He dies? Oh no. NP. Auto solve rest of combat and he LIVES AND GETS XP! YAY!

#2;

Oh noes! AI declared on me. What to do? Kill that bastard asap. Your champion and sovereign should hopefully be imba now, so it should be np. Hard+ difficulty? GREAT! Awesome cities to capture. If you got Despair scrolls etc. Now is the time to use them, Paragon your champion up (the spell), you should get at least 5+ levels, withouth gimping your sovereign too much. Put Despair scroll on highest level champion/sovereign. Profit. Kill and get good cities. This is where your sovereign build comes into play.

You did plan him right? Hardy etc. Sovereigns, means Paragoning champions like mad, you can get 2+ levels every time with the appropriate spells/skills (remember tutelage if you got air magic), Magic/Warlock sovereign means wtfpwning poor AI's with your fire/shadow/water magic (blizzard is pretty sick vs expert+ AI's), Life Sovereigns means spamming Mantle of oceans (40% reduced mana cost with water/life magic OMG!) and healing shrinking/growing stuff everywhere. Death Sovereign with speciality gets you infest combo with blind spamming the fuck of everything. This is were your real options are. Plan your Sovereign with what stuff you like to do. You can ask me for more sovereign strategies in replies if you want.

#3;

But wait? What about the food? Well this is awkward. I don't care about food early on. Research and hammers is where it's at for building stuff, mana for staying power. (not food and hammers like in Civilization) But if you want those high level cities going, that means you need some towns here and there.

I usually do Conclaves with 1-2 Essence, Fortresses 3-4 Essence and Towns 0 Essence sites. And AI likes towns so you will get some food going from there if you steal from them. (Grocers/Bakeries etc.) If you really want to Simcity early, get a Sovereign/Champion with Water/Air for Gentle Rain. Steal spirit from poor champions if you must. (I like starting with a combination of earth/water and life/death depending of faction and stealing Air for later from some poor champion with steal spirit.

Mana is key here. Get Meditation going in high essence cities, build shrines etc. you need that mana flowing to beat the AI. Beating him troop for troop isn't going to work at higher difficulties, so mana is the equalizer. Paragon as mentioned is pretty good for upping your champion asap. If your Sovereign is Warlock specced, you know what to use your mana on Freeze/Tremor is your buying time spells. (again, see why water/earth specializations is invaluble at start) Mana is your go to thing, when you have trouble dealing with stuff. There are always solutions in mana/spells, and this is why I always pick high essence sites over low essence sites early game when settling cities.

#4;

Feel free to criticize/say your opinion. This is just how I play my games. (Have beaten Insane/Huge map with this strat) Depending on your honor, my abuse of auto complete combat might be borderline for you I abuse stuff as long as it isn't a bug, and play from there.

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I don't like that exploits (Auto-Resolve) are part of the strategy described here.

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Two of the most useful tactical spells in the game are Flame Dart and Sunder. To get both, your sovereign must start with Fire and Air magic. Upgrading to Fire Disciple unlocks Flame Dart, you need both Fire and Air Disciple to unlock Sunder. Sunder will make short work of Elementals, Flame Dart will inflict serious damage on most other denizens of the game.

I start my sovereign with Fire, Air and Water apprentice. That doesn't leave many points for anything else but I get Inspiration and can quickly add Flame Dart and Sunder as my sovereign gains levels.

There used to be books you could find that would teach new schools of magic but I haven't seen one of these since the beta. Not sure if they're gone or just rare. As far as I know there is no way to find the prerequisites for Sunder in the current game - you have to start with them.

You can control the order of units in an army and the AI will generally attack the last unit first. Put a powerful unit that can take a few hits at the end and you'll suffer fewer fatalities.

Autoresolve shouldn't be an exploit - clearing out stacks of monsters (Darlklings in particular) can be tedious with autoresolve, being forced to micromanage the tactical combat would kill the game.

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

Quoting JMiddleton,

reply 2

If Pariden is in your game, you can buy the books from them, if they have researched the necessary tech. Or you could just create a faction with The Decalon as one of its traits.

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Quoting AILST,

reply 1

I don't like that exploits (Auto-Resolve) are part of the strategy described here.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insights. I do agree, however, that the auto-resolve exploits is something I don't like. Also, the f-bomb detracts from what was otherwise an excellent post.

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Quoting coyote303,

reply 5

Quoting AILST, reply 1I don't like that exploits (Auto-Resolve) are part of the strategy described here.

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insights. I do agree, however, that the auto-resolve exploits is something I don't like. Also, the f-bomb detracts from what was otherwise an excellent post.

I was *slightly* intoxicated while making this guide (so apologies on the F-bomb, I'm not American sorry), so maybe I should elaborate some more on this:

Auto-complete is one of the most important features for this game IMO, and since it's a double-edged sword (hello archers owning my champion), predictability is what you need for it. I provide predictability here in certain situations that is beneficial for you. (The Guide Part) It's not an exploit. The AI does auto complete all the time in their combats, so in reality, tactical combat is the exploit if you look at AI vs you.

Since both paths (tactical vs auto-complete) is an option and a meaningful decision is made wether to do tactical or auto-complete, it's IMO a part of the game decisions, and a way to get better at the game. Knowing when to auto-complete and not is a skill hard to master, and calling it an exploit is to cheapen half of the combat game.

If you feel something is wrong with it, make a post with bug in it, and how you want it to be. Calling it an exploit is elitist imo, since you feel you are playing some higher standard than me or anybody else using auto-complete as a decision in this game. (what part of using auto-complete is an exploit and what is not? Who decides that?)

In an earlier patch there was a bug where the prismatic potion gave you immunity from damage in auto-complete, so using that and then auto-complete let you kill any mob you wanted. That was an exploit. Using the auto complete feature as intended is not.

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