03-05-2002 06:43									#1
	Strategy Notes! Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

****This Thread copied from the old forums*****

Posted by Vel:
Well...I figure it's not too early to start thinking in terms of strategy for a couple of different reasons. First, because doing so might provide some nuggets of information to the AI team, second, since the game's still changing and developing, then things listed herein that are viewed as exploits, too dangerous, or just plain mean can be toned down and dealt with accordingly.

As with every other strat thread I've ever started, it's my sincere hope that this won't be a one-ring circus...lol...the more pairs of eyeballs we get on the subject, and the more brain power we put toward working on it, the better, and stronger the strategy thoughts presented here will be!

So...I guess I'll start us off with the following observations:

The Early Game:
Turn 0 - Most important turn of the whole game, because decisions you make here will either set you up for success, or doom you to a slow-growth.

I would contend that regardless of your overall strategy, it would be a relatively weaker choice to go with a Temple over a Barracks (despite the cost difference) on turn one. This is because you NEED to be able to build viable attack forces to expand quickly with, and for no other reason than that. If you begin with a Barracks, then you can place troops as of turn one. If you build your barracks turn one, then you essentially give your opponent one free turn of growth, in exchange for a paltry sum of gold and 1 point of Influence. (and later on, I'll contradict myself and tell you why the Barracks is--or can be-- the weaker choice...lol)

So...if you wanna get off to a strong start...if you wanna hit the ground running, and get yourself built up into a strong position as quickly as possible, stick with the fundamentals and take the Barracks as your free build.

Initial Force: 100g doesn't go very far, but what you WANT is bulk. Mass. Don't get fancy here, then. Buy 6 infantry and be happy with it (saving 10g in your military budget). Alternately, if you really wanna milk the most out of your cash, then the best thing you can do would be to buy 4 Infantry and 2 Archers. Spends all your cash, gives you the same number of attackers (6), but also gives you two first strikers. That's the optimal 100g build-out. (Strategy Note: Again, it mostly depends on what you want...buying 6 Infantry and saving 10g can help ease the expense of first turn Mercs...OTOH, the flexibility of those two archers is pretty sweet!)

Troop placement: Don't be shy about it. Place your troops adjacent to the territory you mean to smack around first....if you went with the 4 Infantry and 2 Archers configuration, then place one of your archers in the territory you choose to but your barracks in....you'll see why in a bit. Place your barracks in the territory that will enable you to crank out the most troops (econ value of province/10 = Number of troops per turn that can be trained there).

And you're all set!

Turn One: Let's assume an average of 50g per Province, and you begin with 5 Provinces in your holdings. You can reasonably expect 250g then. That's decent. That gives you plenty to work with.

Remember tho, that your money is split two ways, military and non-military, and you gotta pay upkeep first. So, you have 6 troops, 2g each in upkeep = 12g, 250-12 = 238g, or 117g for Military, and 117g for Non-Military stuff.

First thing you wanna do is ensure the survival of your "good" troops, and that means Mercs! You can place and use mercs immediately, with or without a barracks, and you should do so to the limit of your abilities. Note though that Mercs DO have to abide by the per turn troop placement limits, and if we build on the assumption that each of your provs is worth 50g, then we'll go ahead and assume that the prov containing your starting force is valued at 50g. That's five Mercs you can drop down in the territory to bulk up your force, and I'd recommend doing it! (don't waste your money on bountying them up tho...the only reason you bought them is to soak up losses!).

Spend the remaining money in your military budget on some more infantry, with an eye toward building a second attack force over the course of a few turns, and, if possible, transfer 3g from your military budget to your non-military budget, and use the 120g to build yourself a temple...now you can start raking in some influence each turn! (117-3 (transferred) - 50 (Mercs) = 64 gold left over, or 4 Infantry. Not great, but it'll work for now!

Attack! Again, we're assuming here that all provs will have a value of 50g for simplicity sake, so you'll be facing 5 Infantry with force of 5 Mercs, 4 Infantry, and 1 Archer. Having run this simulation a number of times (no bounty for your mercs), I can tell you that you WILL win this fight, and can expect to do so with 3-4 casualties most times. Let's assume 4.

So at the end of your first game turn, you've expanded your territories to 6, expanded your income to 300 a turn, and have two standing forces. Your main battle group has 1 Merc, 4 Infantry, 1 Archer (in the newly acquired territory), and you have 4 Infantry and 1 Archer stationed at your barracks (which is, in all liklihood, adjacent to a number of Neutral territories itself)!

You're broke, everybody you need to move has moved, so end your freakin' turn.

Turn 2: Income 300g, less upkeep for all troops 11*2, leaves you with a military budget of 143g (including the 4 left over from last turn), and a non-military budget of 139g).

First step: You need 4 Mercenaries for your first attack force and 5 for your new attack force...90g off the bat, which leaves you 53g in your Military Budget. Hold that for the moment, we'll get back to it.

Non-Military Budget: Time to start thinking in terms of research, and the field is wide open here, but remember that in the early game, the two BEST THINGS you can put your research efforts into are Military Techs and Infrastructure. Military research sees the most immediate and tangible benefits, but some of the early techs don't do you much good in terms of helping you grow your empire. OTOH, if you're worried about a blitz-style attack by a nearby human player, then the choice is simple: Dump whatever money you can afford into Infrastructure, and begin thinking in terms of developing chokepoints in your empire (territories that you can fortify and hold). In this case, with two viable attack forces up and running, we're going to not worry about getting any more for the moment, and focus on getting some of the fundamentals covered.

Research points average out to cost you 1g per point. It takes 80 points to reach the first "level" of any given tech field. We got that covered, and I'd heartily recommend dumping all available non-military monies into Infrastructure techs. That will almost assuredly net you level one, and put you on your way to level two (Watch Towers). In fact, you might as well siphon off the extra money from your military budget this turn and toss it in there too! While you probably won't be AT Level 2 Infrastructure, you'll be close. Next turn for sure!

This turn should see you acquiring two new territories (8 total, Income of approx 400g), losing an expected 8 troops for the effort (8 Mercs you bought specifically to preserve your forces).

Turn Three: Upkeep on 2 Mercs, 8 Infantry, 2 Archers = 24g, leaving you 188g in each pool.

First stop: 8 Mercs to replace your "expendable guys," leaves you 108g in your military budget.

Second stop: Research! From here on, I'd recommend spending at least half of your available cash on research, and buy one new facility each turn if possible (remember that the moment you get level 2 Infrastructure, you got all the basics covered: barracks, temples, watch towers, scribe's towers, and markets)and here's where you wanna start specializing things according to whatever grand plan you have in mind. If you're Castillar, and/or wanna go for massive Influence, then Temples NEED to be your biggest priority (you can prolly squeeze by with 2 Barracks). OTOH, if you're Mourngrym and/or want to go with additional economic muscle, then build Markets more frequently, and of course, about everyone could benefit from those Scribe Towers. Watch Towers, you wanna save for choke points, and when you build a Watch Tower, plan on leaving troops there! Nothing more humiliating than building defenses, forgetting to man them, and making it harder on yourself to root out your enemy later!

To that end, watch the direction of your expansion, and the MOMENT you start brushing up against another player, drop back to a choke point (or plan your expansion toward one), fortify it with a watch tower, and "retire" one of your attack groups, leaving it stationed at the watch tower as a guard against enemy expansion, and adding to it whenever practical.

Once you get to 400+ Income per turn, you're pretty well set, cos you can afford to continue to add to your force pool at a decent clip AND research AND more often than not, add a new provincial improvement to the mix. Of course, all that's relative...if you're at 400 and your rivals are averaging 700, you're pretty well toasted and don't know it yet, so remember, speed is of the essence!

Faction Specific Notes:
Furies: Generally have an easier than normal time expanding, despite the fact that their Cav. Bonus is not an early game advantage. The fact is that they can get two viable attack forces up and running by turn two, and have a higher than average "kill rate" when attacking into neutral territories (since each of their early game attack groups can be assigned a leader). This sets them up for fewer losses during the expansion phase, which frees up more money on a turn-to-turn basis, which can be used to set up a 3rd+ expansion force, faster research, more improvements, or whathaveyou.

Castillar: You begin the game with the ability to build temples, and all you need is to acquire one territory and build temples in all, and you're cranking out 10 influence per turn....let that build up as you expand, and you can quickly stockpile sufficient influence to render you immune to serious attack for a VERY long time (meaning you don't need to staff your borders, and have scant need of fortifications, saving you time and money on both counts...money that can be spent to speed your way through whatever branch(es) of the tech tree you prefer).

Wizards: Your advantages are more effective against other players than against neutrals, so you gotta be a bit more careful with your expansion. You don't have burgeoning influence or leaders to help you, and bad luck can set you back. Still, let that mana supply build up, and you can pretty handily lock down the human player of your choice when the moment comes (assume an average expansion, you'll have 12 territories before your natural expansion ends, which is 12 mana a turn...sufficient to pay maintenance on 3 castings of Pestilence....you can create a VERY wide killing field pretty much anyplace you want to, and maintain it forever)!

Mourngrym: Cheap Mercs mean more money for other stuff, though your naturally higher Espionage percentages make it all the more likely that you'll head down that research path, and why not? Honor is SOOOOO overrated! *G*

The Seven: NOBODY will wanna attack you. The Honor hit would be bad enough, but beyond that, the risk of open rebellion in territories controlled by those who would attack you makes it a daunting prospect indeed. Add to that the fact that you can convert their troops, and anybody who DOES attack you deserves what they get.

Like the Wizards, you have no advantages that are particularly helpful in terms of early game expansion, but that's okay. Be careful, execute a steady program of growth, and focus on military techs (till pikemen) and infrastructure techs (till level two, at least), and you'll find yourself sitting in a good sized territory, protected by your Praetorians, and able to peacefully build your way to dominance.

Watch your near neighbors though...they CAN be dangerous to you, each in different ways.

Mourngrym is like a locust with his endless stream of Mercs, and the Wizards can mess up your static defense by laying down a Pestilence line through your stoutly defended borders. Neither of these is crippling by themselves (though in the hands of an equal player, they'll give you a run for your money), but if the two gang up on you, staunch defense and advantages aside, they can and will wear you down. Thus, it is in your best interest to stay politically active, and play one against the other at every opportunity.

Because of the starting position of the Seven, it's entirely possible that they'll wind up with a slightly smaller territory than the rest, but in this case, smaller does not necessarily mean weaker, as the Seven can fend off attacks from significantly larger forces and win handily (Consider a Castle on the border, guarded by 32 Praetorians - This would give The Seven player 32 units with two rounds of first tier attack, and stats of 2/17/1 (BEFORE military tech bonuses to infantry are applied!). Not unbeatable, but pretty damned close). Let The Seven player live long enough to get his borders looking like that, and good freakin' luck trying to take him out of the game entirely!

-=Vel=-
(to be continued....)
******

Posted by FrustratedPoet
yep, i can see the barracks and 6 Int or 4 Int 2 Arch combo being pretty much the standard opening gambit. i would not advise anybody to replicate my foolishness in building lots of early Cav with Fury. their Cav is great, of course, but they're too valuable and you need to get them a meat-shield first.
however, if you are Castillar you might consider a temple or two early game, since this faction will depend a lot on influence to defend itself from the rampaging Fury's Cav and Mourngrym's mercs and dirty tricks.

playing as the seven should present some interesting problems. anybody who shares a border with the wizards just has to be terrified of a prolonged Pestilence attack, so despite the seven's awesome defensive armies if they congregate too much in one place then they'll all die of the plague. if they're too spread out things could get messy too, of course.
btw, does the wizards use of spells on the seven count as an attack, thereby causing a loss of honour? or not?

it seems to me that fury and castillar might be able to get an early tech advantage in most games. because they are spread relatively far apart on the large plains of the west they won't have all the pushing and shoving that Wiz/7/Mourn will have in the more crowded east. therefore they will be able to ignore defense in the early game and instead concentrate on attacking forces to gain provinces. these attacking forces needn't be too strong because they will only be up against fairly low numbers of infantry, no combined arms to woryy about. the neutral Int should never be underestimated, though, just ask my poor Fury Cav commanders anyway, this should leave both Fury and Castillar with some spare money to spend on research that the other factions won't have.
it's worth mentioning that mourngrym and seven earn loads more money per turn than fury and castillar because they have lakeside provinces. the average for them is way over 50g i think (more like 80 IIRC). this makes them much richer, but they're going to need that money to fend off attacks from each other since they start sharing a border.

will seven's and mourngrym's extra income allow them to sneak a tech-lead over fury and castillar?
will the relatively undefended open spaces of the western kingdoms allow fury and castillar to have more disposable income than their rivals?
will the wizards just keep everyone ineffectually hopping their units around the map like crazy to avoid frequent attacks of pestilence?
will anybody ever find enough change down the back of the couch to invest in espionage research? and if they do will everyone else wish they had done the same?

for all these answers and more tune in to the next exciting episode of Candle'Bre...

--FP--

EDIT: is there any chance of another meeting soon? activity on this forum has exploded in the last 4-5 days and it seems like a good time for us all to meet 'face-to-face' again. any time is good for me
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	03-05-2002 06:46									#2
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Posted by Vel:

Excellent points, Stoo!

There are times I can see the early temple really paying off (specifically, as you mention, for Castillar)...I have an absolutely *beautiful* strategy I'm prepping to test that relies on a first turn temple, and can be played by any faction, but I'm thinking that for a brand new player, simple is better, and the barracks, 4 Inf., 2 Arch. combo will serve most new, and many veteran players very well. It's a classic min/max opener that you can't really go wrong with.

(Very briefly, the "Temple First opener" essentially says that, yes, it costs you a single turn's worth of troop buildup to get that temple going on turn 0, but the price difference between the Barracks and Temple saves you 40g, which is easily as valuable(and sometimes moreso) than many territories you'd be attacking on turn 1...thus, it's largely a push where that's concerned, AND you gain an extra point of Influence. Hand in hand with this is the notion that since you won't be building the barracks on turn 0, you can keep your starting forces together, and add in an extra Merc to the attack force as well. This will enable you to tangle with a larger province than you otherwise would be (4 Inf., 2 Archers, 6 Mercs as opposed to a force of 4 Inf., 1 Archer, and 5 Mercs), and on the following turn, you can build your barracks in the territory you conquered on turn one, setting yourself up for faster conquest (more troops per turn from the barracks, and that territory is nearly surrounded by neutrals). Could be a strong, strong alternate plan, but a bit trickier to play than the first method put forth, which is fairly straightforward.

It's worth noting too that, using "historical" starting positions, the Furies and Castillars aren't as isolated as it might first appear. Everything where that is concerned, hinges on the actions of the Mourngrym player, and what direction he takes his expansion. If he so wished, he could be at either Fury's or Castillar's doorstep by the end of his second turn, leaving the Wizards and the Seven to fight over the rest of the East.

Would he?

Depends.

Given that he's already in control of many of the lakeside provinces, he may be content to let his eastern neighbors fight over the spoils (Since the two--Wizards/7--are almost a perfect foil for each other), while he stirs the pot against Fury and Castillar (two factions whose power grows dramatically as the game grinds on....Castillar after the establishment of a number of temples to get that Influence cranking, and Fury once cav starts getting added into the force pools. If Mourngrym can hit either of them early, before their biggest advantages come online good....::evil grin::

As to the Wizards...an excellent question, and it should be noted that the use of spells is never regarded as an attack per se, so it would not trigger any loss of honor on the part of the Wizards. And while we have been discussing ways to limit Uber-stacks in the game in another thread, your observation on Pestilence brings home a VERY good point. If anybody has an Uber-stack, they run the very real risk of having it taken out from under them the hard way, courtesy of the Wizards. That alone, makes for pretty good incentive to keep your forces as spread out as you can, while maintining sufficient concentration to accomplish your goals.

Given historical starting positions, I'd have to say that in a five way game, Mourngrym is firmly in the driver's seat. His actions on the first three or four turns of the game will pretty much dictate the flavor of that game, given his centralized starting position, cheap troops, and fat bankroll. Because of that, however, Mourngrym faces a very real danger. His greatest strength is that largely centralized starting postion, giving him the flexibility to expand in any direction he wishes....however, he's also totally surrounded, and his chief advantage (cheap mercs) is an early game advantage. Once Military techs start rolling in, Mercs become less and less attractive, and hardly worth considering as anything but bodybags, so if Mourngrym is going to make use of his position, it needs to be sooner, rather than later....ideally, the Mourngrym will pick one rival faction and go for a quick kill, consolidate his holdings and start playing the survivors off against each other (making use of espionage to drain research coffers and keep the game low tech for as long as possible). Barring that, suicide waves of cheap troops (half infantry, half merc) should keep everybody hopping, and Mourngrym with an early game kill would probably have the money to do just that.

One thing we might have to do, if the starting income levels prove too unbalancing then, is to assign a standard bonus for lakeside provs (say, a 20g bonus for each). This would bring down their income levels, and still make the lake provs QUITE attractive.

More! More! LOL...I'm really getting into this....talking shop about our new game!

-=Vel=-

Yes! Another meeting would be a good thing! And you're right...we kinna crept up on the 1000 posts, but then...WHAM! LOL...full speed ahead!

Will figure out a potential time and post something in the meeting thread on that soonage!

-=Vel=-

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Posted by Frustrated Poet:
oh oh oh! i like that temple strategy! very clever.

the wizards seem very well suited to controlling the uber-stacks, but they need to know they're there of course. how does fog-of-war work? will the wizards need to develop their espionage tech in order to see provinces they don't share a border with?

i think mourngrym is gonna have to play defensively for at least the first couple of turns, but a lot depends on turn order in that part of the world. if i'm playing as mourngrym and i take my turn before the seven player then i know that if i don't defend my border against attack then the seven will simply annex one of my provinces on their first turn. the same is true for the seven player.
under these conditions i can't see any scenario when the Mourn and Seven players wouldn't automatically defend their adjacent provinces on the first turn. can you? if not, then should we consider changing this? predictable strategies are not good things.

however, with this set-up then some VERY intersting decisions would have to be made on the following turn. do you further strengthen your defensive army in the hope of attacking your neighbour, or do you place a stack elsewhere to try and clean up the neutral provinces? the delay in using purchased troops comes into effect here, of course, since the player who goes last out of the two will be able to see what their opponent has done before they have to face an attack.

your thoughts?

--FP--
******

Posted by Vel:
WhoooHoooo! And the discussion rolls on!

With regards to fog of war: Only adjacent territories can be seen, however, the wizards can make use of Divination to "see" into any territory they choose, and it's pretty cheap (IIRC, it's 2 mana per, so at game start, they could peek into 2 territories...not that it'd do them much good, but...lol).

But, what better way to curry favor with the Wizards then by informing them of the existence of an Uber-Stack in Province X, and make some kinna "arrangement" for them to do a little spell casting....hehe

As to Mourngrym....not entirely sure. See...part of the problem both the Seven and Mourngrym face is that if they sit there defensively from the get-go, then they essentially give the game to the other factions. They'd almost have to come to some kind of short term arrangement in the interest of their mutual survival.

With Mourngrym's income and cheap troops, he can afford to leave his border undefended, because even if The Seven launched an attack, Mourngrym can counter in a turn or two with overwhelming force, and The Seven player knows it. I think what'll keep them from going at each other at game start is the threat that, if they do so...if they start fighting tooth and nail from turn one, then neither of them will win the game...they'll wind up with Mutually Assured Destruction, or in the very best case, marginalization.

I think if I'm playing Mourngrym, I'd just send a quick note to my buddy playing The Seven and tell him that I have no plans to staff my shared border with him until we're more firmly established, and leave it at that.

If he attacks me, I'll lose a province, and I'll know exactly who my first target is. If he doesn't, then perhaps there's an alliance in the makings....::grin:: In either case though, my next-door-neighbor has been given enough rope to hang himself with.

So, yes...if I'm Mourngrym, I'd pay little or no attention to the fact that I start with a shared border, but I'm guessing that if someone knew that about me, they could really mess me up. Hmmm...perhaps we should adopt an idea from Rise of Nations? Have at at-start option specifying when player attacks could begin, and before that time, it was either build up or attack neutrals?

We could tie player attacks to tech level...say, no attacks till pikemen hit the table, or something like that? Have it float though, so you could change it between every game, including an option for player attacks from turn one....*G*

-=Vel=-
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Posted by Cyclotron7:
Creating a tech level to limit player attacks would never work, because of differing strategies. If you delay attacks to pikemen, you'll basically cripple Mourngrym. Mourngrym will want the delay as short as possible, while the Wizards and Furies will want the delay as long as possible to build up mana or cav, respectively.

From looking at the terrain map, Mourngrym basically has to go west, not waste time throwing forces against the Wizard stronghold or the 7's praetorians. If Mourngrym occupies his time for many turns trying to master the east basin, Furies will sweep in at their liesure. Cav may bite in the mountains rimming the basin, but unless Mourngrym has siezed the fertile lands of the Core Wizard provinces the Furies are in an excellent position to assault and take the flat provinces of the lake and Westkeep/Eastgate. Mourngrym looks like they would need to quickly establish a buffer zone to the west before they bother with their neighbors.

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Posted by FrustratedPoet:
good points. i'm not a fan of prohibiting attacks either, but just having it as an option wouldn't hurt. some people might like it, but the default would have to be 'off'.

you're right, Mourn will want to create a buffer zone against attack from the west. if he loses Westkeep and Eastgate he won;t be able to fight back effectively. however, i'd still be tempted to try and bite into my opponent's territory on turn one. if you capture a big portion of their income you put them at an early disadvantage they may never recover from. holding the province is another matter, of course, but even if you only hold it for one round of upkeep/income it could be worth it.

i can't wait until there's a playable version and we can actually test this stuff. theorising about it is great, but once we play we'll have lots more stuff to talk about, things we - not even Chris - haven't even thought of yet. it's gonna be COOL!

--FP--
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Posted by Vel:
The delaying attack option at startup though, could be made to work any number of ways....we could say "no attacks till X tech level in any category" (which wouldn't hurt mourngrym much, since he'd be an eager beaver to get some espi experience), or, a Church-based moratorium on attacks for x turns (which could also be set to zero).

If such a moratorium was in place, any player could break it...for a price. Say...the loss of all accumulated influence with the church, and half normal influence rates for the rest of the game for bein' a sneaky bastard? LOL (this, from a discussion Stoo and I are having as I type!)

-=Vel=-

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Posted by FrustratedPoet:
Sorry i didn't say goodbye at the end of the chat last night, Chris, but i crashed out and since it was already 2.45am i was too tired to get back on.

anyway, i'm assuming that the introduction of garrisons removes the need for any kind of moratorium on attacks, whether they be tech-dependant or a Church restriction. is that reasonable?
it was a neat workaround, though, wasn't it?

that improvised chat last night was pretty darn cool, being able to knock ideas around and bounce them off each other in Real Time was very helpful. i'm exhausted today, though, shame on you for keeping me up all night hehehe

i'm glad that the obscene power of Praetorians has been exposed before the release of v0.1. maybe they'll need to be nerfed again, i don't know, but i think the new rules represent a more solid foundation.

it would be nice if, when one of us is cruising the forum with some time to spare, we just open up the chat window for a while. that way we can see if anyone else is on-line and maybe get a couple of other freestyle chats going.
just an idea...

--FP--
*****
Posted by Vel:
*G* 's quite alright Stoo....I lurked around a bit, and did some more thinking before signing off.

Came to the half-conclusion that we might be better off dropping the Praetorian unit altogether (yep...I'm actually advocating CUTTING a feature...lol), for a couple of reasons. First, by the tweaks we did to the unit, it's not terribly different from a Pikeman anymore, and I'm thinking it's not "different enough" to warrant having a separate unit, and second, I'm thinking that The Seven don't really need it in any case. Even without the unit, their two main abilities make them fearsome opponents (loss of honor and chance of rebellion in your provs if you attack them, and the ability to capture and convert your units...that's pretty heinous!) Having looked over the results of those sims we ran last evening, and done a few additional ones besides, I'm really beginning to believe they can live without it.

Also, last night, I did a few tweaks where starting provs were concerned...shifted the Wizards' starting provs a bit, cos I realized that they were literally all over the northern border of the Seven, and it was too constricting. Still studying that, and will post the complete summary of changes when I get it all nailed down....this strikes me as also being a *superb* way to continue to tweak and change starting income levels so that everybody falls within a tighter income range at game start (tho, given Fury's starting abilities, I'm actually kinna glad they have the lowest starting income on the table).

So...my next step will be to more firmly come to grips with the map and economic valuations for all provs, using the "rule of thumb" I posted in the original rules doc, and modding/tweaking as needed to make it all hang together properly.

For the curious, here are how the incomes shake out as things stand at this moment:

Fury: 200
The Wizards: 220
Castillar: 230
Mourngrym: 230
Council of Seven: 290

I'm pretty happy with that general spread, though the Wizards and Mourngrym may see a slight increase, and the Seven may get knocked down a tad....in my head, I see the final numbers shaking out something close to:

Fury: 210
Castillar: 230
Wizards: 230
Mourngrym: 250
Council of Seven: 280

Specifically, I'm seeing these income levels working well because of the following reasons:

Fury's setup is such that he'll be taking relatively fewer losses in the early game...less money per turn, that's true, but also lower replacement costs to keep his early battle groups running, and the lower relative income will keep him from running away with the game.

There's a certain beautiful symmetry in my mind to having Castillar and the Wizards starting from the same point, income-wise, and their powers, while very different in their use and function, strike me as being nicely balanced power-wise with each other. Neither of them has any really compelling early game strength, especially where dealing with acquisition of new (neutral) territories is concerned.

Mourngrym is...something of a kicker. While not having the highest income on the board per se, his cheaper troops probably give him the edge in overall purchasing power. This though, is offset by his starting position (totally surrounded and essentially threatened on all fronts), and by the fact that he'll be burning through money faster than most in the early game replacing losses (attrition should be more of a factor for Mourngrym) and/or bountying up his plentiful supplies of Mercs.

The Seven NEED the income boost at game start, as they are the ONLY faction in the game to begin with direct borders with two other playable factions. Garrisons aside, this puts them in the least tentable position where expansion is concerned, as they must pay immediate attention (or at least, more immediate than the other groups) to the defense of their borders. The fact that they have relatively fewer expansion options, however, is offset by their extremely potent factional abilities. Partly due to their somewhat constricted starting location, and partly because of their faction-specific bonuses, I predict that this group will be the most difficult of the lot to play effectively (especially in the absense of the Praetorian), but also the faction where we see the largest amount of strategic variance. In my mind's eye, even without the Praetorian unit, of all the factions, The Seven will probably have the greatest interest in getting to Pikemen VERY quickly, simply because of the defense bonuses to be had. Their two best candidate territories for Barracks (territories 9 & 10, IIRC), are quite close to their neighbors borders, and the Seven's house of cards could tumble down very quickly if they were to lose either. If it was me, I'd be hell bent on military tech research till I got to level 3, and with fewer expansion options from the get-go, and a higher total income in any case, I'd probably be inclined to forego buying masses of troops in the first couple of turns and focus on research...perhaps even getting by with a singular (free) Barracks till I got to the point where I could bulk up on Pike.

Their chief advantage, it seems to me though, rests with the fact that others will be loathe to mix it up with them, meaning that in general, The Seven will be able to control when and where combats with other players occurs (and generally, it'll be cos the Seven launch an attack). My guess is that he who ignores his defenses on border territories with the Seven will be just asking to get rolled through (given that you can't counter attack without risking rebellion, loss of honor, and the possibility of fighting some of your own troopages!)


And on that note, I'm off to do some more plotting and scheming!

-=Vel=-

	04-05-2002 18:45									#3
	Remove this text

:sigh: all those posts by me and not a boost to my post-count in sight.



btw, all through the above posts I keep refering to Infantry as 'Int' - this is because I am stupid
... the proper abbreviation should, of course, be 'Inf' ... I blame Vel 'cos he kept me up all night chatting ...

* FrustratedPoet hates time-zone differences