Bakemono-Sho! You should be ASHAMED of yourselves, routing to militia like that! I expected MUCH better of you. Why I never. Luckily my archers hit a time or two, and the enemy decided to rout right after you did. I am so disappointed in all of you, it’s not even funny.
Okay, actually need some heavy hitters as well… or at least some fewer stabmagnets.
Also: We’re five turns in and I’m not last in everything!
If I read the Hall of Fame correctly, have we already had a prophet bite it?
This turn, My prophet Piffle the Wise, who is currently summoning ancient death monsters from the void, has gone insane.
Maybe its because I am making him spend his days deep below the ocean floor inside a dark rift, surrounded by piles of goo larger than he is and a few scared atlantians.
so far this race is the best ive ever played- man and ermor got nothin’ on crazy summoner Piffle!
Yes, that would be my prophet, as I painfully detailed here. Long post short, he was trampled to death by a routing Mammoth, one that had all of his HPs.
Mysterio, I’m not sure how to explain the routing of your Mammoths. I know they are “known” for routing, but I don’t know the details.
Well, it probably didn’t help that I had only three in the squad, so the squad was subject to at least one morale check. Also, the description for them states they are easily frightened when damaged. Maybe that had something to do with it.
Hey, to those of us who are still really new at this – what are some basic army strategies? I mean, how do I set my army up to not get killed by archers and militia?
How I’ve done it so far is putting my spearmen or something in front, my archers back behind them, and if I have any cavalry, them on the wings, and I set the archers to Fire Closest, spearmen to Attack Closest, and any cav is to go Attack Archers or whatever that command is, while my commanders either hang back or sling some spells. But with Shinuyama, I’m getting chopped up.
I have a bunch of different units, but I don’t think I really get the use of all of them. And my spearmen die a bunch – are they not a good unit to bring out? Should I be using clubs instead of spears? Is there a reason to get a lot of low-rent units instead of just focusing on the more powerhouse types? I’m still not quite sure of what I’m doing.
I also don’t want to go look elsewhere for ideas, since I don’t want to break our house rule of strategies. So, vets – help me out a bit?
Also, if I have a spell like burning hands or whatever that seems to extend out from in front of my caster, and he’s behind my troops, am I just going to kill all my troops? Because I don’t want to do that, and I don’t really want to find out the hard way. :)
This is honestly the first game where I’ve begun to ask myself some of the questions you’re asking, Kid Socrates. For example, there’s a heavy cavalry group next to my capital, and I thought maybe if I recruited spearmen with “long spears” (length 5), they’d have some shot at parrying the initial lance attack by the cavalry, which seems like the most lethal of their attacks. I’ll put the long spears in front, as much infantry as I can muster behind them, and then bring along a couple of priests to boost morale. (Actually, I’m not sure Man even has such priests.)
I don’t know if this will work, but I’ll find out by trying.
I rarely give my foot soldiers orders like “attack closest”, by the way. In fact, I’ve never actually issued that command ever. Sometimes I order my archers to fire at enemy archers or fliers. That’s about it. Otherwise, I let them do what they want to do, and I set up my dudes like you described doing.
dfs
6509
ahhh. Distress on my end.
I received turn 5, but no nation shows up when I go to play it.
This is on a different machine than I played my other turns on, but this machine is the machine I sent my pretender from.
The Llamaserver is blank on this. What have I done wrong?
Huh. I thought if I let them do their own thing, I’d be in a lot of trouble. I’ll stop worrying so much about it, then. Let me know how that battles goes! I’m very curious.
Dfs, do you have the map downloaded on that system? I made that mistake once in Pacific Dreams on another computer.
If the enemy has missile troops, it’s best to place melee units with shields closest to your front line to draw the missile fire, since they are much less likely to be hit by the projectiles (shield’s parry value x 2; pg. 77 in manual) and missile units are typically set to Attack Closest. If you also have melee units without shields, place them to the side and slightly behind your melee units that have shields. If the enemy doesn’t have missile units but you do, use the Hold and Attack command on your melee and cavalry units instead of Attack, while your missile units soften them up at range using the Fire command. After two rounds, though, your melee and cavalry units are forced to advance.
Keep in mind that if a missile unit has been given the Fire command, they’ll move forward until they’re in range of whatever you asked them to target. So, placing your missile units in the extreme rear means they may have to move forward before firing (depends on where the enemy placed his units; PD units are always in the middle), which might ruin your battle placement. Longbowmen can be placed further back, due to their increased range, but you might want to place your non-Longbowmen missile units in the middle, if you’re not already.
Also, when being attacked by a nation in one of your provinces with PD, keep in mind that your PD will be positioned in the middle of your battle formation. Use them as a meat shield by placing your troops behind the middle line of your battle formation. Allow the PD units to take the damage, because they’ll pop right back up if you manage to win the battle. The units you recruited won’t.
Since we’re using a custom map, did you download it and place it into your maps folder on the other PC?
EDIT: Doh! Didn’t see Kid’s post before posting this.
wahoo
6513
Quick notes: Units of 3 have a good chance of routing especially when they take damage. Check your morale, make sure you’re not starting…B/c a group of 3 fighting in enemy dom can have a sub 10 morale and break easily (as I broke Caelum’s mammoths in Atlantic Fervor combining damage with “frighten” spell) Good times.
As I recall, Shin’s spear have cruddy protection. So if your guys are attacking closest and archers firing closest, I bet your archers are shooting your spearman. Rewatch the battle and see if your archer volleys are hitting your own guys. I love that aspect of the game that just like all warfare, artillery fire doesn’t care who it hits! Use hold then attack and fire closest…
If you’re fighting archers, get troops with shields and then attack archers.
DFS: I resent the turn. Let me know if there are other problems!
dfs
6514
Downloaded the map. no joy.
Tried the new turn. no joy.
I’m puzzled. I’ll try on the other machine later today.
Somehow…I’m sure I can tract this back to Man!
Enidigm
6515
I like setting my missile troops to Fire Archers. Generally you’re always going to have better quality and quantity than some random Independent province, and the sooner they break, the sooner you win. This also cuts back on friendly fire.
But as was said above, shields + armor are the primary means of deflecting arrows - knights with an average protection of 17 with a kite shield are more or less immune to unaided missile fire. In fact, it’s pretty much directly related to resource cost; the cheaper in resources the unit is, the more vulnerable it will be to missile fire. And there are some exceptions where shields aren’t perfect - Marverni’s bare chested warriors have no armor, but a shield, and they can’t quite do the arrow blocking job without the armor as a second layer of protection.
So what i like to do (this is a bit gamey) is buy a couple of knights, position them far (far) in front and then set them to Hold Ground, Hold Ground, Hold Ground, Hold Ground, Defend Commander. Just a couple of knights set in front can absorb most of the missile fire without taking damage, and then they’ll just return to the rear of your formation before getting killed in melee.
I’m trying to remember the unit list for Shin… i’d buy lots of those warty little goblins archers, have them shoot at range, and throw a few highly armored goblin-samurai in with some of those Obo-whatever, large mountain Goblins as they are easy to recruit quickly.
Ahhhhhh. The shields thing makes sense – I was going to check and see what I have as far as shielded units go. I can’t immediately think of any, unfortunately. Spell research time!
wahoo
6517
Atlantic Fervor:
Aiee, Marverni lays waste our castle in the VP hex. Gates are breached and my little mages are scared. Hundreds of crazy Celts are charging through. We can’t ho…
In other news: Down goes Caelum! Or at least its mammoths. We stomped took a lot of damage but beat off the Caelum attack force eliminating a large portion of the attackers. And the remnants are still diseased and won’t heal!
More importantly, we laid waste to Ermor. Four Ermorian provinces and still more troops went down before us. Now, the fruit of victory lies in our grasp. Do we lay siege to their victory pt castle? Do we take Ermor proper itself? Which tempting target shall Yomi seize! So many lovely choices…and Ermor hasn’t been able to rebuild fast enough or summong their defeated pretender back. Shame really.
SPOILARS!
(I haven’t seen the turn yet. :D)
- Mysterio draws Oceania from the nation pot! (JOINED!)
- Juffo-Wup draws Bandar Log from the nation pot! (JOINED!)
- ThornFalconeye draws R’lyeh from the nation pot! (JOINED!)
- Josemas draws T’ien Ch’i from the nation pot! (JOINED!)
- Kid Socrates draws Ulm from the nation pot!
- Samurai draws Caelum from the nation pot! (JOINED!)
- Eduardo X draws Machaka from the nation pot! (JOINED!)
Ok, it looks like Kid and I are the only ones who haven’t submitted our pretenders. I’m going to work on mine, now. So if Kid can submit his tonight, Turn 1 will host tonight!
@Eduardo, Juffo, and Thorn: Please confirm that you guys submitted Machaka, Bandar Log, and R’lyeh, respectively.
You’ll get mine tonight! Stuck at work right now!
I don’t know anything about these Ulm cats. I need to keep my manual with me.
