Just a short session so I might continue later, but wow, so far it's basically nitpicking, so a huge improvement over Elemental (where the list became quite long).
My first playthrough was not fun, though. I just clicked "new game" and set the difficulty and AI to normal instead of easy, but I began cornered against a mountain, surrounded by other players with no chance of expansion. Also to the south of me was level 5 NPCs which I wasn't able to hire yet, but there was seemingly no chance of getting my sovereign up to level 5 within that small area. A much stronger AI built an outpost right outside of my city quite early on, and then I built a few outposts to the south to get some prestige objects but that was it. When an AI for some reason declared war on me from beyond a mountain range, I tried to get there but got steamrolled by a strong monster. I didn't feel like there was any point in continuing after that. If this was a random map, I'd be OK with it, but apparently these maps are actually designed? If so, piss poor design, imo. Feels like whoever did this never played Heroes of Might & Magic, Age of Wonders or Master of Magic. I know that cities are supposed to be rare in this game, but to have the first map of the game block you in? Frogboy is always talking about fun, and this was the opposite.
My second playthrough wasn't fun either in the end, but I discovered that there are indeed random maps! (Why on earth would they want to try to sell you map packs then???) This time, I didn't chose a melee sovereign but a ranged one and wow, talk about difference! No other kingdoms blocking me in at the start so I was free to kill all monsters roaming the land myself, and apparently you can move and shoot in the same turn so basically nothing could touch me. Also, I received a lot of healing items from quests and caches this time. But then I attacked an army that had a weak rating standing on a cache of some sort, and somebody named Nikonus was amongst the units. And I got steamrolled again.
My third playthrough repeated the same pattern, sadly. Lovely map in the beginning with a crazy amount of spots for cities, so I quite quickly threw out five or six of them! Had fun battling through weak armies and avoiding the strong larger ones, until there weren't anything but those left. So what am I missing, how do you level up your sovereigns to beat the stronger monsters when there are no weak or mid left? Anyway, just one other ruler on the map for a very long time and we had lots of trade pacts and economic pacts going on. Then other rulers appeared and immediately declared war, despite me not seeing them on the map. This then caused every subsequent ruler who introduced themselves to also automatically declare war on me (and then ask for trade pacts... though I think that's a bug related to number 10 above). So I begin fighting back the invading armies and it goes well. Until a lone hero walks by my city where I'm resting. He is weak so I think no problem, he is alone, so let's slay him. Aaaaand steamrolled.
My conclusion is that even though it's 100 times better than Elemental, it is still many times worse than Master of Magic, Age of Wonders, Heroes of Might & Magic or even Civilization V. The polish and balancing just isn't on the same level as those other titles. But although it may be unfair to compare this to titles with a lot bigger teams and budgets, on the other hand Fallen still wants to compete with those games, right?
Well, I've waited for a number of years, I guess I can wait a bit longer... if I had to rate the game on a scale... 3/5 (with all other titles mentioned above being 5/5, except for Civilization V which gets a 4/5 because of their utterly stupid AI).
EDIT: I just have to add, in case if it wasn't clear, if they just fix the difficulty going from 0 to 100 all of a sudden, this game can easily become 4/5 without any other adjustments. It's the insanely unbalanced units which still are labeled as "weak", yet soaks up all damage and basically one hits my sovereign which ruined my experience three times, as you saw above.
I agree with some of your observations, and I have some suggestions and some of your points I have no comment on. Diving into the list:
0. To alleviate my not knowing how the controls work, and because I am not interested in reverting to old games, I have set autosave to save every season. Then, if I click and my unit goes running off in the wrong direction I can restart that season. This gets tedious but I consider it essential while learning the game.
1. Yes, this can be a huge issue. See my point 0, above. Also when you have your mouse over a piece of terrain you can see how much movement you will lose for moving into the tile (0.5x means you will lose 2 moves, while 4x means you will lose a quarter of a move and when your moves reach or cross 0 that units movement and ability to initiate combat ends for that season). For now, it is best to move only one tile at a time.
2. This also displays your tax rate and mouse over gives you some breakout. Also, if you go to the "Govern" screen and select "Ledger" you have the same widget, along with "City List" and "Economy" which give you further details. And, yes, running your economy is really that important (though you have multiple "right courses of action" with tradeoffs which depend on how you play the game. For now, I would just pick something that feels right...
3. Before I discovered that tooltip, I would hit "ok" instead of "use" and then go to the units "Equip" screen where I would mouse over the item to see its details.
4. Until the improvement is built, it's just a framework. But it does get added to the city. The details of what you see depend on how you have your options configured.
5. I wish that text would change to "Read Tutorial" when there was no video. I also wish that the help information contained details which are currently missing. If you have time it would be valuable, I think, if you wrote down a list of unanswered questions you had after reading or watching each tutorial. There is just so much about the game that I have had to learn from playing it, and now I suspect I would not recognize most of the gaps... But, also, I am too lazy to build that kind of list.
6. If those strategic bonuses are spells then they will need both mana and essence (a variable amount of mana, with a very few costing zero, and 1 essence per strategic spell). If they do not show up in your spell list they typically are for the city that the NPC is in (unless the description says otherwise).
8. I usually move closer to the border so I can see something inside it which will tell me the owner of the land. Note that this will make the opponent sovereign aware of me if he was not already aware of me (and if it's a sovereign that owns that territory).
10. You do not get the benefits from an improvement until after it is built. (However, you have to pay any up front costs when you put it into the queue to be built, so usually it is best to not have a deep queue.)
11. This might mean that your enemy has no idea where you are, either, depending on how good their scouting has been. Enemy rulers declare war for their own reasons (which you can get an idea of by going to the foreign relations screen -- motivation might include things like "I'm paranoid" or "today is a manic day" (though the latter seems to be a motivation for peace rather than for war) but also can include things like "your army is weak" or "we have a different allegience".
13. This typically means the city is already in view.
14. I think that there is a tooltip somewhere but I forget where. There's plenty of room for improvement here.
15. Yes. See also my point #0. Once you have an idea of the improvements you can also include your next planned improvement into the name of the place. Edit: apparently you can also move the map with the arrow keys? I need to try this...
18. Dark green is often something other than a sovereign. You can see the color code by going into "Govern" and selecting Foreign Relations (unless you have enabled "smart player colors" under advanced options).
I played through on easy my first time through, and that was challenging enough for me because I did not know what I was doing. I then set it to one option lower than that, and that was not any easier for the start, but none of the other sovereigns improved (so I quit that game because there did not seem to be any point in playing it).
Note also that you can research improvements, unless you are playing Altar (or a custom faction you have designed for this purpose) you are probably need to build a civilization to support your research efforts and your research choices will be important.
I read it, but too long to respond to each of the comments.
For the most part, I agree they are generally usability nitpickings. Play a bit more, even use ctrl-n to get a better starting location. It all opens up to you.
You'll need to pick your battles carefully - be sure to duo or have a few units to start. Its a rare battle a non-melee (with armor) sov can solo.
There are definitely some rough edges, but after playing a few times a TON of options/playstyles/cool little things open up - primarily just from familiarity. Check out the manual too, it helps. (I also really HATE the lack of search in ingame help).
the non-player dark green monster = wildlands?
I just received a very important tip from another forum:
Do NOT destroy monster lairs! I believe that is one of the reasons why I felt that I reached a place where I wasn't able to level up anymore in my first three attempts described above. Still, even with this tip, and me continuing leveling, if I look at the faction power, the other players seem to grow at triple my rate. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong, but the game does feel very, very slow.
Fantastic post, well only read point 1 to 20 but those are good points and needs to be said (some of them, if not most of them again and again). nr 17 doesn't really serve its purpose on this list as its really just an eastethiiii-whatever thing. (not saying you are not entitled to an opinion, just saying I agree WAAAAY more with all the others )
If you need me to help you, I will, but once I can plug power to my laptop again (since battery can't live long enough atm.)That said, even if you are explained the details of these things, I don't think it means it shouldn't be considered either mentioning in the tutorial, or considering as a UI upgrade.
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Eobet, welcome to the FE World.
You are suffering the same than many players that are used to MoM/AoW, HoMM and/or Civ games. So let me tell you some things to bear in mind.
The first part, is that FE is FE. It takes features from these games, and mixes it up. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so much. Don't expect to get a new MoM, or a Civ, because you will be missing many things. On the other side, FE shows unique features, like the unit/sovereign designer, wich will provide a lot of fun, and different ways of playing. It takes the ideas of a "4x TBS + RPG units" game and tries to give its personal flavor.
But to get all the juice, you will need to spend some time finding out the mechanics. My advise is to read the post: A newbie guide to Fallen Enchantress (https://forums.stardock.com/435680) to getting started. If you find yourself dogpiled (as we all have been), switch to a lower difficulty, untill you can play confortable, and learn to set a good economy foundation that will eventually allow you to get stronger units.
In this game, you have to fight vs other AIs, and vs the World too (wandering beasts/wildlands -the dark green zones, with strong monsters and a final boss-). That makes the learning curve more difficult, as you have to deal with AIs, Beasts, grow sov and champs, and expand your empire with a good economy, all at the same time. Getting a good early game is probably the most difficult part of the game. Untill you learn a good way for that (and there are some, depending in faction/sov traits), your mid/late game will be suffering.
There are still some bugs, the diplomacy system needs some more work, and many concepts (units, items and/or skills) are tied to a specific faction (so you will not find them again, untill choosing same faction). Some controls (GUI, etc) are not very intuitive, so you can think it is a bug, but not, it is just a poor implementation.
But once you read a bit, and get some practice, you might find a rich world, with lots of replayability and fun. As said, it will require some practice, even for experienced 4x players.
Lastly, the Modding section is increasing. You can find there from small improvements to big modds, that will add more features. For me, it is not necessary yet, as I'm still dealing with the vanilla (>175 hours spent, including some beta testing), and I think I have for some more games, before thinking in adding more stuff -well, i'm working in a roadbuilder unit, but it will take some time to develope, as I never modded-
One more thing: if you have any more doubt, ask it, as the community here is very nice and will try to help you
Well, here is my basic strategy I use at the start of just about any sandbox game:
1. Settle early (near shards if possible)
2. Train 2 pioneers immediately (for new cities)
3. Build monument in first city for town ZOC
4. Start exploring around you new found city (look for land to settle new cities [very important], at least 3 more)
5. Grab all goodie huts you can find (for special equipment)
6. Recruit as many Champions you can find/afford
7. As soon as first pioneer is trained, found your second city
8. Train 2 pioneers immediately in second city, then que monument in build que
9. Continue exploring for third and fourth areas for third and fourth city
10. By now you have probably met you closet neighbor (the one you are about to take out)
11. Study your neighbors city/cities and prepare to take them out
12. Found cities three and four, train 2 pioneers in them, etc.,etc.
13. Take out your nearest neighbor (faction)
14. Start taking control of map
Usually around turn 100 or so, I have at least four cities built, and my nearest neighbor (faction) conquered. My army consists of my Sovereign and 2 or three recruited champions. I continue to keep looking for new areas to settle in and the next faction to take out. I continue to build improvements and start training higher level units in all my cities. You will need higher level units as the game progresses. Grab as many shards as possible.
I have used this strategy on medium and large maps, with easy and normal settings. Over 90% of the time I control the map which is the key to victory (if you are in conquest mode.)
Of course this may not work for you. Obviously there are so many ways to play this game, you can do just about anything you want, That's what makes this game so cool. I have over 186 hours in FE (at least that's what the counter says at the bottom right of the start up screen) and I have only scratched the surface of it. I am trying to keep up with all the modders and other suggestions I see posted.
Again, this is just the way I play
Basher-
"19 A lair converted to a mercenary producing camp did now show up on the strategic map. After loading an auto save it did show up."
Sounds like a bug, you should better report it.Edit: First quote broke... even the forums doesn't work perfectly
"18 Suddenly, I've encountered the opposite of having a ruler saying "hello" without appearing on the map... now I see a dark green border and I have no idea who it belongs to. There is no corresponding dark green name in the ruler list either."
Your concern is legitimate, there probably should be a better way to reflect what it really is (or might be, since I cant see a screenshot), let me answer quoting another reply "the non-player dark green monster = wildlands?"
Edit: Fixing the first quote broke the second quote, bloody forums.
This is the "Auto-defend" option, you will trigger it by clicking the "Pass" option, the little shields adds defense to the unit, the amount of defense added is 5 plus any additional bonuses, these bonuses comes from shields or traits.
It depends on the bonus in question, let me elaborate:Bonus Gildar per turn, bonus Research points per turn, and bonus faction prestige are all added to your total output regardless of tax rate or where your hero in question is located.
An unrest reduction ability only takes effect in the town the hero is located in, but is otherwise only affected by the amount of unrest in that city (from taxes, occupation, spells, the 10% base unrest, or the 15% unrest penalty for not having a city linked to your capital through borders).The unrest works like this:I have 45% unrest from taxes, this unrest affects my production and research points generated,My production is lowered by 45% (from 100% down to 55%, 20 production becomes 11 effective production).My research points are affected in a similar rate that production is affected (this also includes bonus research from buildings).My Gildar income is not affected by unrest percentage (it is affected by tax level though).My food production is not affected by unrest percentage.If I put a hero in a city that have "Administrator 1" (Lowers unrest with 10%) and I have my hero next to the before mentioned 45% unrest city, the hero will not affect the unrest of that city,but if the hero is stationed as a garrison within the city, the city will have reduced unrest. The hero will reduce unrest by 15% from 45% down to 30%. (5% because its a hero in a city, 10 extra for the trait the hero have).
On another hero trait you can gain certain spells that affect cities, an example will be "Obsession" which increases production and Gildar produced in the city, this spell have to be cast on the cities they need to affect, also consuming essence unless otherwise noted.
These were some quick rules I could help YOU with, I hope it answers some of your questions, I don't remember how those bloody trade treaties work in the details, someone else might help you there. Me helping you should in NO WAY replace the idea that the flow of information SHOULD be improved...
The rest I find I cannot give you a temporary help with, except explaining how you might see these kind of things through the user interface, but it still is difficulty to both learn and use so I hope the developers see this thread and considers upgrading some of these elements.
If you have any further questions, please ask, I will be watching
Played a little bit more and added points 20-23.
Had two cities get wiped by wandering strong monsters which made me give up on my fourth playthrough.
I've just realized that this game is not a competitor to MoM, AoW or Civ V. It's a competitor to Rogue, because the difficulty ramps and deaths are just as frequent and random!
But perhaps I'm playing the game wrong, because every AI I encounter have at least twice the faction rating than me.
My suggestion would be to lower world difficulty.
I hope my responses have helped. Anyways, on the off chance that this is useful, here are my thoughts on your new points 20..23:
20. When I am playing in tactical combat, I see a green grid on the ground which shows where my character can move to, and when I have my mouse over an opponent I see a red grid on the ground showing where it can move to. If this is not the case for you it must be controlled by something in the options screen.
21. I do not use auto select next unit and generally find managing the distinction between "units that I want to do something with" an annoying aspect of the gameplay. I find myself walking through all of my active units before moving to the next turn, and I also find myself trying to minimize the number of active units.
23. To get rid of the floating numbers on the strategic map, I always left click on the opponent army stack before fighting them. It should update automatically, but it does not, so I live with manually updating it.
I agree with a lot of your UI issues.
In terms of difficulty of gameplay, other than reducing difficulty, some things to consider are:
Great post! Thank you! I pretty much agree with every nit. This can be a confusing game at the start (though not as bad as some I could mention). Good rule of thumb: everything has a tooltip.
Random answers to some of your questions:
Essence is the city resource that allows you to cast spells on your settlement. It's the third/blue number in the tile yields. (I almost never found a city on a tile without at least one essence.)
If you click on an army, settlement, outpost or resource building the information in the lower-left corner will show their "crest" icon (a bear, or a dragon, or some such). If you hover over that icon you can see the name of their faction.
That is not the "only real" solution, this game is created around every playstyle, you have to play a very specific way to be competetive.
For Eobet, if you are still having trouble, have you looked at "Tuidjy's" Walkthrough? - https://forums.elementalgame.com/435680
Also if you design your own units instead of using the ones that comes with the game, you get a better chance of success, just pay attention to initiative and damage. (The predesigned units are pretty bad).You will want to expand as much as possible as early as possible, and also train a few units to assist your heroes (this is a few places new players usually go wrong )
Added a few more points to the list above.
Changed sovereign in my latest playthrough from the lady with the bow to a red guy who could create henchmen. Never got any metal or shards on that map, had a city destroyed, and all units I produced up until when I gave up were all immediately slain in their first battles. 100% loss at all times except for the champions. Extremely slow and agonizing game.
I discovered two things, though: Faction power is basically only the number of units in your army (there's no scientific or cultural victory in this game, it seems) and the weak/medium/strong is absolute bullshit. Weak units inside of the colored borders where elemental bosses are seem to be about equal to strong roaming units.
Am I having fun yet? Not really. Am I frustrated enough to give up? Not yet... but probably pretty soon.
Just to double check, you are aware of the Warfare tab in the research menu, right?
The starting weapons for Relias are really really bad. I never build any units with the starting club or the starting staff. After getting a few key techs from the Civilization tree (like Civics), first thing I do is research spears, because spears are really really good in the early game.
You'll also want to make sure you custom design your units and be sure to add traits. The +3 Defense and the +3 HP are key for survival. The +1 Atk/+15 weight one also really helps, especially if you plan on upgrading later. Speaking of upgrade, when you design a unit, double-check that you have selected the Upgradable icon for all weapon and armor slots. (Unless you, for example, are using a 2-handed weapon and can't use a shield.) This way, if your custom spearmen survive, they can upgrade to better armor and be even stronger.
Lastly, if you're getting destroyed, there's no shame in lowering the difficulty while you learn the game.
There's also no shame in saving before a battle and reloading if you get destroyed, or reloading a previous save from a few turns ago if you made a bad decision. Sure, it takes away all the difficulty if you can undo your bad decisions, but the best way to learn this game (or any game) is to try different things and experiment until you find something that works.
That's not really true. Also you should be able to realize that those can never be precise - they are different armies/fractions around. What is easy for one faction, is not necessarily easy for another and vice versa. Bear can be weak for army of archers or mages, but is devastating for melee ones. Should it be hard/medium or easy?
Hence, the best method is to check each unit in an enemy army - what they have, which characteristics they have.
Yes... before I fight an unfamiliar opponent, I go read all the descriptions and try to decide if I can handle it - if I am outclassed in all ways, I am going to lose. If I think I have an advantage, I might be able to beat them.
With the lady you were first playing, I only played the game on easy so I do not have any useful advice for you.
For the guy in red: you should probably be researching a base civilization (the easy tier in the civ tree) then pick up some of his special abilities (the quest books and the fireproof leather armor, and henchmen). Also you should be recruiting every champion you can find but keep them separated except for if you need them together for overwhelmingly difficult opponents. And do lots of quests...
If you do not want to fight the other nations, or you are not ready to do so, arrange to have higher power ratings than them (you can watch power ratings before you meet them in the kingdom report) and when you first meet them negotiate a non-aggression pact (and charge them however they will accept, for the privilege), and if you also can get into advantageous trade relationships they will tend to like you (this should eventually be easy, once you understand how to deal with your research and development options, since they will be blowing all their resources on combat)
are you autocalcing your battles? because you probably will get better results (and learn more) running tactical battles yourself.
#1 design your own units. make sure that you buff them with three attributes (the last tab) as those just cost a little more time and make the units significantly more powerful. the +3 defense one is a good one and the +2 initiative. I like Charge which gives the unit extra moves and extra attack on the first turn.
#2 the wildlands are really DANGEROUS.
#3 it really pays to carefully examine the property sheet of any monsters you are attacking. (You're right that you can't always go by the weak/med/strong thing, but a lot of that is subjective. An army that would eviscerate a couple spell-casters might crumple when faced with a couple mundane units.) Take note of special abilities and spells (coal stones is evil!) and if they have a weakness to a magical school you have access to, by all means take advantage.
In general the big numbers are attack/defense, but those can be tricky and even misleading. Let's compare an army of mites with an ogre.
A mites mob army might have 40 attack which makes them look daunting. But that 40 attack is split up amongst a dozen units. And that means a unit with decent armor will have no trouble because even light armor will absorb those little attacks. They also have 0 defense and very little hit points. That means that the fight wont be very long, because while they are plinking away 5% of your unit's hp per round, you'll be hitting them for 50-80% hp.
An Ogre, on the other hand, has 38 attack (roughly the same). But that attack isn't spread across a dozen units. So your armor which was doing great absorbing the mites piddly 4 attack, will be completely ineffective against the Ogre's 38 attack. It's unlikely that your hero with 30 hitpoints will survive more than two shots. And you're going to need to survive, because that Ogre's also got 18 defense and 76 hitpoints! (Basically, what your champ is to the mite mob, the Ogre is to you!)
If you're going up against an Ogre, you're going to need backup. Bring troops with decent defense and hit-points -- research Cooperation (in the Civ tree) to get 4 units in your trained troops (more units = more HP + more attack). If you've researched archery, bring a group of archers. And bring a spellcaster hero who can debuff the Ogre.
Shrink (a life spell) cuts the Ogre's attack in half. Blind and Curse (death spells) will, respectively, give your more chance to dodge and remove the Ogre's defense completely. Slow (a water spell) or Haste (an air spell) gives you more movements between the Ogre's already slow attacks. There are numerous strategies to employ, but all of them require time before the Ogre smashes your face in.
Another thing to keep in mind, if you are wandering through the wildlands is that armor doesn't protect you from magical attack at all. Only resistances to the specific type of attack (Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison)
The default best unit already takes 10 turns to produce. If I add all of those traits as you guys suggests, it takes me 28 turns (spear and leather armor included). That feels insanely slow.
How long it takes to build an unit depends on the production of the city. Basically production time = unit cost/city production. To build units faster, make sure you have a city with good production. This means founding the city in a location that has high materials(4-5), a clay pit or two nearby(addds 1 material each), is next to a forest(allows for lumber mill construction) and has enchanted hammers cast on it.
Next, you want the city producing the unit to be a fortress, as those can build training yard, barracks, etc. line of buildings which give a % discount on the cost of an unit, e.g. a spearman costs 100 production, but in a city with training yard it costs only 90 production.
Then, its a matter of technology. Restoration tech gives you workshop that increases city production etc.
------------------
That being said: Don't be discouraged by long build times. Your goal is not to mass produce cheap units(unless you specifically want to play that way), but to produce a couple of excellent units that will last you through the game. I usually play as gilden, and aim to have 3 cavalries with boar spears and best armor, built in a fortress(+1 level) with barracks(+accuracy) and forge(+2 defense) while the city is enchanted to give the units it produces extra defense, extra health, and extra fire damage.
It does not really matter that those units take a long time to build, because i only have to build 3 of them to steamroll all but the toughest monsters near my starting location with my sovereign's stack. Just keep them alive, and after a few levels their high HP combined with high defense(gilden has 25% bonus) will make them very powerful.
So I'm supposed to put out units which takes 28 turns to produce, while at the same time try to out pioneer the AI players, who seem to still be able to build heaps of improvements while maintaining triple the faction power than me?
I need to watch some Youtube videos of people playing, because I had no problems with MoM, AoW or the Civ games, but I can't see what I'm doing wrong here unless the AI cheats and the game really is supposed to be a rogue-like experience.
Sort of?
I usually build my pioneers during the early history of my city's history. Also note that once you have researched basic civilization you gain the ability to rush production, and pioneers are relatively cheap to rush.
Not at the get-go.
Get spear technology, design a unit with spears and the weakness trait(you will have to "Edit" the scout, its really cumbersome to grab the weakness trait ATM). This will serve as a decent meat-shield unit with proper attack (never build any unit wearing the "Club", or Gilden's special version of it, its really really useless).Delete or hide that useless "Militia" design that is wielding nothing but "Clubs", they are a disaster. I would rather redesign them using "Staff" (cheaper to build, loses 20% damage, but gains 20% more turns).
When you can grab Leather technology, aim for a unit with moderate encumbrance and meaby +3 defense trait (Not too important), the trait that is important is the trait that gives +1 dam, and +15 weight capacity.These units should be wielding spears, so you only need the first 2 techs in warfare, a proper design aims for half-cheap armoured units.
The next party-trick is to keep your soldiers alive to gain levels, it helps if they are trained off a fortressGet that Forge up and running, ignore everything else in a fortress, meaby the Training Grounds is a good idea too, but getting an early unit is more important.High level soldiers get to survive a lot of hits.
Get a Fortress with 2-3 Essence and 3-4 Materials(3 grain, more doesn't hurt but a 2 grain city is hard to get to level 2).This will ensure you get both city-enchantments that boost trained units (and meaby production) and a steady flow of units.
For your starting city, Essence is nice, But materials is king. It doesn't matter how few Grains you get, just grab that 3-5 Material spot asap, slow production kills your early game.
Until your first city reaches level 2, or you have constructed a 2nd city run taxes at "NONE", this will ensure maximum research output and production output while losing 0.3 gold per turn or so, a really pointless sum.
Don't build too many buildings the first 50-100 turns, a new city is a 100 times better than a new building, do consider the quick Workshop or Lumbermill, after turn 50 consider Merchant and Study in your non-Fortress cities(Fortresses should be busy building fortress stuff).
If you are still having trouble, I recommend trying starting sovereigns with either Earth Magic or Water Magic.Earth Magic gives a +1 material city enchantmentWater Magic gives a +1 research per turn enchantment which means a lot in the starting game.
Hope this helps.
I do build those sometimes. You're right that they are next to useless, however those clubs are very cheap(3g) to upgrade to hammers when you research weapon technology. So i just build a couple of those and have the sovereign take them into easy battles to get them experience. When i get them leather armor, shields and hammers, they are quite powerful.
I usually don't use the default militia for this tho, but a custom designed unit with increased carrying capacity(to be able to wear upgraded armor later) and ironskin(capitalizing on the gilden armor bonus).
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