I was just playing a game (expert) myself and I was doing the worst because I got a really bad start.  Ythril was hurting me pretty bad and razed one of my 3 cities.

I beat one of their main armies, but they had another right by me.  I had to take my units into a city to heal.

Well, I had tamed a hoarder spider and that was really helping me defend against them, except when my units went into the city it poofed into non-existence.

I don't know if it is supposed to work like that, but I wouldn't think so.

I had no heart left to play that game anymore after getting cheated out of my best unit.

No.  I had 6 units counting the hoarder spider and I was running around using it.  Then I went into a city that had 2 units in it and I lost 2 units in my regular army, the hoarder spider and something else I don't remember what it was.

So I did have the army size capped before I went into the city, but the city should always be able to hold an extra 9, right?

I thought extra city defenders weren't ever capped, but if they are capped just like the army then I would think 2 of my units would sit out instead of 2 units suiciding.

So here is the leftover. I guess.. I dislike seeing my effort going to waste, I think I will go forward even with this ridiculous bug.

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Because the darkling may attack my scout, I won’t try pick up the goodie next to it, instead I am grabbing quests. Once I activated the quest, it is mine and I don’t have to worry about AI taking it.

In turning phase, no surprise, the spiders decided to attack my queen’s army when it is crossing over the river.

The small black widow (yes, there will be bigger one) has no armor, other than that, it is really a balanced monster. It has good health points, attacks strong and most importantly, it has poison effect on attack that will poison the army, continuously damage it until the battle ends. It also has good confusion-type spell (which gives chance to attack random unit instead of the target, perfect for against numerous armies like… mine) and immobilization skill called web. Very versatile beast type monster that I do get those spiders when I play sovereign with beastlord trait.

Oh, speaking of beastlord, it is utterly broken in 1.5 patch so do not play as beastlord until it is fixed.

Like I said, AI does know what unit needs to be die, and it is indeed my spearmen, doing massive damage on them.

But I still won the battle and got a nice leather armour for my queen.

And finally my city has reached level 2. I have to choose what my first city would become. So here are three choices.

1.) Town : Specialized for making gildar and provide more food for other cities. Which both are not needed for early game.

2.) Fortress : Specialized for more production and troop training. Very needed for early game.

3.) Conclave : Specialized for more research and mana production. Also very needed for early game.

As I like to go for production, I chose Fortress. Now, since my city has reached level 2, I am free to produce my pioneer, which will sacrifice 30 population from the city. You will notice the level up bar (which is also population bar) has decreased considerable amount. The reason I have been holding back making pioneer from the first city despite the fact it already has enough population is that if I do make pioneer too early, I will further delay my city’s level up. Notice, even if the population goes to zero, once the city is leveled up, it won’t degrade to lower level with all of the improvements intact.

I keep cleaning spider nest (found another one further east.) and queued the pioneer and put it on very first of the production order. My scout is keep picking the quests.

Now, my planning is separate one of my troops (militia one) as a new scout to further go down east, and I am moving back and clear the west side while doing quests. I could circle around but I may get obstacle to do so. Now, with 1 slot of my army stack will be empty, it’s time to create new spearmen.

But I do not like current original design of spearmen, not to mention the design is actually inefficient. So I decided to create a new design. So, same weapon (spear) but this time, for armor, I am not going to equip that basic upper body armor and cloak. A trait called Ironskin will gives 3 armour for 14 productions, while the armor and cloak currently cost total of 2 armour for 12 production. While difference may seem small, this is early game now, and every single production number counts.

Also I am going to put underdog trait. My spearmen will attack stuffs harder if the stuffs have higher level than my spearmen, which will be…. pretty much everything on the map right now since my spearmen will be just level 2. Now I name this unit as a Slayer.

Now my pioneer is dashing for the new tile for making city, and with 2 essences and normal 3 materials, this will be my first conclave.

Dragon teeth, very useful summoning item (consumed after use) when against harder army. Remember, if you fight monster stack that is higher combat rating than yours, and win it, you get more experience bonus than cleaning lower combat rating.

Argh, an umberdroth. With an hoard spider, it is the best monster a beastlord can get. I’d kill myself for tame this dog as fast as I can, but my queen is not a beastlord and with current patch, the beastlord is utterly broken so unless I get studded collar, I will just kill it anyway.

So my pioneer created a second city, and I just noticed it also has iron ore next to it. Very important for making armor and higher-grade weapon troops since it needs metals.

The build order of soon-to-be conclave is follows Workshop -> Belltower -> Scrying pool -> Garden -> (study) -> rest. Always take care of production and unrest. Notice taking care of unrest both improves production and research of the city. For the enchantment I put research one and mana generation, which will generate mana per turn depending on how many enchantment sockets the city has. Currently it is 2, so it will generate 2 mana per turn. After the scrying pool, it will be 3 mana per turn.

Workshop at the first city has been completed and now has enough population to make another pioneer, so I put another pioneer on the production tab after slayer.

Milita says goodbye to queen and moving further to east, while my queen is going back to west.

My scout is actually getting blocked by wandering monsters and hostile knights here.

After turn is passed, hostile knights responded and moving toward my scout. It got the aggression and targeted my scout. If I do not move him properly, he will die here.

He escaped the knights, keep picking up goodies and moving forward to west, but now I’d like to change the direction to south and circle back to east. Now see what he picked up so far….

disappointing is the best word to describle. At least he got plenty of the quest activated.

(now funny bug happened again. I decided to reload the game with autosave, and those slayers being made on, is gone from my city, yeah, they just disappeared. I laugh at the fact that autosave is still broken as hell, after all of these years. I am not sure if I did the right choice to pre-order Galciv 3.)

Anyway, I will fight this shaman stack without slayers. Notice my butchermen army has grown to 4 men from 1 man. Now, I am going to skip the detailed tactical battle description for already-covered lairs. I will do it again when I meet new enemies.

I won the battle and butchermen is now maxed at 6 men unit, doing massive 54 damage.

Trading is done, and now I am working on knowledge.

Another reason I rushed trading was that when the research is done, the roads are automatically created between cities, and it is not just for beauty; roads actually gives a huge bonus to the unit’s movements on the world map so I can move around the map much faster when my unit is on the road.

Now, time to finish this sand golem thing quest…

Something to remember, sand golem (and a lot of natural golems), all ogres except young and banished ogre, all trolls, and some others, and any trained units with club-style weapons like milita, has an ability called crushing blow. It makes the unit loses next turn, but it smashes its target with twice damage. Now with my queen and low-level champion, it is such a fatal blow and usually kill him/her at one hit unless he/she dodges or have enough hp and/or defense to survive. If the champion and/or sovereign dies, even if the battle is won, no experience point for him/her will be given. So I won’t put my queen on the front of the sand golem.

Sand golem used its crushing blow on butchermen, but butchermen dodged it, and won the battle.

And I completely forgot putting experience enchantment on my queen, damn it.

Hmmm, 6/3/0 tile is quite rare. It can go to level 3 town with little problem I think.

Another mistake. I thought this lair was darkling warrior lair, but it was wilding warrior lair. Wildings are actually weaker than darkling although they have more hp. Oh well, nothing special until you meet wilding shaman, which is completely different monster from other wilding types.

...but crushing blows really hurts.

and they killed my shadow warg. Good thing it is a summoned. Now, instead of summoning it again, I’d rather wait to my queen to get another level for summoning. The reason is that this game’s level up system is also utterly broken (yeah, a lot of things are utterly broken indeed.)

Consider this scenario:

Summon level 1 shadow warg and by participating battles, it is now level 5

Summon level 5 shadow warg, it is level 5 from start.

Those two are very different. Only obvious thing they will have common is their health value (even for some cases, this is also not true too.)  second case will have higher attack and higher initiative value that will make far more dangerous. Former case will still have same damage when it got from level 1

You see, the problem is this whole level up mechanism is hard-coded, and different at each individual monsters. Some cases levels do not make differences at all, some cases everything changes, and some other cases only partial differences occur. In a code file, it is a total mess. I once tried to mod this problem, and I gave up shortly after I saw how much modification and rewriting has to be done on this part.

I enjoyed this read. Keep it up. Shame about the bug though, and as the author of the snaking mod, you can build the logging camp and the pier whenever your city is next to forest or river. Without the mod though the rules are such

xxx
xcx
xxx

If the city is in the middle there, and there are ANY forest tiles on the x's then you may build a logging camp on forest tiles as long as one of the forest tiles are located as such. Once all these forests are removed with improvements you may no longer build any logging camps. A harsh punishment for logging camps, but it is one of the first buildings to build (in my que). The rivers work the same way, except you cannot remove the river tiles. Thought I would clear up those rules.

This is really cool. Stickied.