In response to a flame, Brad said he wanted to know people's strategies for winning so in future he could program the AI to beat those strategies (and gave a good explanation IMHO of why they haven't spent huge amounts of work programming the AI yet).
So, amidst all the bug reports and complaints and requests for everything to be different, here's one noob's brief comment on what I've been doing so far. I'm playing at a very easy level and fast tech pace to get a feel for the game, and haven't played out to the end yet, so this is just a reaction to what the AI does in tactical combat.
What I've done so far is tech basic infrastructure, especally gold and research-related techs, then go for Leatherworking to improve my champions' armour, then go for archers and longbows, then go for heavy armour for my champions. I'm not sure I have useful comments about how I fight battles when I'm at an earlier stage because I lost about half of them when my troops were wimpy.
It seems to me that most of the monster groups I've fought can't cope with a line of blockers backed by archers. My latest army is three champions with Growth and Haste, with 3 longbowmen groups. The champs spend the first couple of rounds buffing the archers then protect them and attack when the AI gets closer. The archers do almost all the damage. I did similarly in an earlier (unfinished) game but with one champ, 2 archers, and some heavily-armoured troops. The AI does a little bit of concentrating on taking out one blocker but they don't seem to be quite smart enough at it; I've seen one monster switch from a heavily-damaged blocker to someone else. Maybe they also need to coordinate their approach better; if I hang back and wait for them, I get a couple attacking one blocker when several are further back and unable to help; when I attack them, everybody who can possibly target a single attacker goes for that one.
I don't think this is news to anyone, but I figured it was a good idea to give a try at the kind of feedback Brad was asking for. Maybe others with more experience can write similar but more insightful posts. I expect to have more of a challenge against an enemy faction at a higher difficulty level; the monsters don't have as many options as the enemy AI. I expect they'd have more ranged attacks, for example, and better use of spells. When I get that far maybe I'll post again.
1. Found city anywhere, never did pay attention to grain/production counts.
2. Set up base ( kill all I can, produce some units, build the city up, get the econ going).
3. Research archers.
4. Kill everything that moves.
Yeah, basically, strategy didnt change yet.
This is how my games play out, except I'm playing all default settings.
[edit]: w'regard to turns, my last game (won by alliance on next size up from small map) took 84 years, so 4x that many turns I guess. I recall one of my earlier small-map games was 87 years, but I don't recall which victory condition.
archers, and magic from champs is how I pull it off.
Usually research the tier 1 and 2 civics techs+ shard harvesting+ book of winds sometimess.
Small map, Hard:
Build either an archer sovereign or a fire and water sovereign
Build the first city
Research civilization to get the first and second improvements
Research warfare (archer sovereign) or magic (mage sovereign)
Use hit and run with high movement
Kill everything with the bow (archer sovereign) or fireball, blizzard and mantel of the ocean (mage sovereign)
What is do is very similar DexCisco does. I usually have 1 city into well into the game, although I will build multiple outposts in order to harvest shards or gold/iron deposits. Occasionally I will build a 2nd city if I happen upon a good location.
As Dex says, I often leave my cities and outposts undefended early in the game because monsters don't attack them. So outposts are just a cheap way of expanding your territory and claiming shards. Obviously, the counter to this is to have monsters raze undefended outposts.
Once you clear the area around your cities, you almost never have any monsters come near. I think this should be tied to the unrest rate, the higher the unrest, the more wandering monsters and bandits that invade your territory. This could also be tied to the number of defenders in the city. A lighly defended city would be more prone to have bandit/wandering monster issues than a well defended one. The only issue here is that this might create a 'training ground' for untested units and players might leave cities undefended or lightly defended in order to get XP to units.
Monsters rarely destroy improvements. I build on a fire shard right next to a lair of spiders and they never attacked it. That sort of thing should be automatic.
Monster armies need to have MORE and tougher creatures. Too many Strong/Medium armies are just full of 6 or 7 very low level creatures. There needs to be HORDES of creatures with tougher levels and defense.
Monsters don't have enough special traits. Especially the bosses. Bosses should be the equilent of a 20th level hero in the number of traits that they have available.
The only spells I generally use are HASTE, SLOW, GROWTH, SHRINK, BLINDNESS and HEAL. Burning hands does too little damage, flame dart generally doesn't do enough for the cost. Most of the spells that take 1 turn to cast other than Blizzard are not worth the cost either. Monsters should have a greater spell resistance and Growth/Haste/Slow need to cost more. The only strategic spells are use are Lower Mountain, Cloud Walk, Firestorm (if I can't get a army in fast enough) and sometimes Flame Blade and Regeneration on my heroes early in the game.
Unrest (and I have said this before) is not a game mechanic that I pay any attention to because the only libility seems to be is reduced production and research and usually I have built buildings that counter these penalties. High unrest should cause growth to go negative, bandits to appear nearby to destroy improvements and caravans. Lowering unrest should be a goal of the game.
I generally will try to recruit one hero, but I have played games where the only 'army' I had was my sovereign. When I train units early in the game, I train pioneers to build outposts to claim territory. I usually focus on Civics and weapons (to get leatherworking) and only in magic to get shard harvesting (which should be higher up IMO). I think magic needs more lower level items to make it attractive.
Diplomacy, rarely use it because it's Lame (sorry). You really can't trade anything to another sovereign and when they have a supposed military rating higher than you they ask for a ridiculous amount of gilder to get a non-aggression treaty. Since there seems to be plenty of grain/material/horses/metal/etc. there really isn't any reason to talk to them other than to go to war.
So while I am having a lot more fun playing FE than I ever did with WoM. Monsters (at least Strong and above) need to be tougher and smarter and cities still seem to be lacking although I think you are headed in the right direction. I'm not sure what you are ultimately planning for Diplomacy, but right now it's pretty irrevelent.
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