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tobyr
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Princeton, NJ USA
Oct 1999
time: 05:14
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In several recent ToT fantasy games I have been very successful with an early game strategy in which I build a number of sorcerors as early as possible. I won the one game I have played at Deity level this way.
The basic strategy is this:
- don't make peace with anyone except the elves and maybe the goblins. (These quickly develop units too strong for the sorcerors to destroy.)
- consider playing on the small-size map, giving your sorcerors even more dominance.
- build your cities so that Sorcerors can move from city to city; usually five or six squares apart.
- When you found a new city, build a warrior, then a settler, then a sorceror.
- But if you have a mercenary nearby that has finished its exploration, skip the warrior and build the sorceror before the settler.
- However in some of your new cities, you will found the city, immediately move a sorceror to it, and then either build a settler at once, or build sorceror and settler.
Early in the game you will have a network of cities, any of which can launch the most powerful early unit. It will be a while before your AI opponents have powerful enough units to withstand them.
- as you build sorcerors, send them out on patrol. This takes a lot of time (I've complained about this in another posting), but after a while you can skimp on patrol. Basically, you move a sorceror one square out of a city in some direction. You then "N" to the other three maps. You then move two more steps in about the same direction, "N" to all the maps, and return to the original city (or move to another one). Look for things you can kill (within two moves of a city, so you can get your sorceror home again.) Gradually cover all interesting directions.
By patrolling you will find many of the goody huts. Waste-pop the huts on maps you do not expect to get to (they just disappear when the sorceror enters them). E.g., playing infidels, you might pop all the huts underground.
As your cities develop, you will overlap the other tribes. (If you don't, consider starting the game over.) Your sorcerors can safely kill their settlers and some other early units. You can also kill units in cities owned by the glasss-jaw tribes (like the buteo), and you may manage to destroy some cities altogether. If not, you can at least keep cities weak, for take over a little later.
When you have developed a stronger unit that can capture a city, move it next to the city, attack it with the sorceror (multiple times!), then step into the city. If the city is not destroyed, your sorcer can then step into the city with you.
In the first 3000 years of the game you can expect to do a lot of damage to the opposition with little cost to yourself. You are also likely to get by without city walls for quite some time.
It is possible (as I complained in another posting) that the sorcerors really ARE too strong in the fantasy game.
- toby
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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com
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04-02-2000 01:39
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