Tips for beginners

[Seneca Raine]

Just bought it, and downloading is slooooow so I figured I'd ask if anyone had important tips for beginners. Nothing huge, but if there's anything interesting you should know when you start playing the game for the first time. For instance, some games have missable items, or vague mechanics you may miss early on. Thanks for any good advice in advance!

[Variant]

Well some quick tips i can offer is when you want to settle on a tile make it has a yeild of at least 3*3 with at least 1(more is better) essense. Also dont use the default units for too long make your own as the defaults units dont take advantage of all the options in the game. Becareful with unit design as you may make units that are to expensive for you or cant make at all due to not having the right resources. There are is a beginner guide here that offers some decent advice try that for more.

[Seneca Raine]

Yeah, I was hoping to avoide actually reading any guides and just learn as I go (been a while since I've had a good strategy game)....but what you just said reminded me of the complexity of it lol--I'll probably look up a beginner's guide then. Thanks.

[Didymus]

Yeah, read the guide if you have the time. It will give you a better idea for the style of your first playthrough. There are so many options in-game. And then in faction and character creation. You are going to enjoy it. Have fun!

[SpaceJunk]

Here's a few things that are good to know when first starting out:

- Champions split experience when in the same party, so separate them as soon as you can manage to build up a proper army for each hero. Same with your sovereign.

- Cast meditation (it's free) and/or other enchantment spells (will cost you mana) on cities that have essence slots available, as soon as you settle it. It's easy to forget to do so later.

- You receive more experience from roaming monsters than AI factions.

- Food of the city determines its growth.

- Don't auto resolve battles.

- Monster strength can be deceiving. Look at their abilities before starting a battle.

- Many monsters have fire or ice weaknesses.

- Research Trading early so you can get your gildar rolling and make treaties as well as have roads between your cities.

- Making your first capital a town type has lots of benefits, like boosting gildar, since all trade goes through it, as well as growth, that will help you settle your next city or get the town level up.

- Settling new cities causes higher unrest in the newly made cities, which you'll want to lower since unrest slows your ability to build and train.

- Pressing the tab key scrolls through your active armies.

[TACO]

im liking these tips... just bought the game off the sale. Im just going Full On YOLO right now. I have no idea what im doing. I think i dug a hole too deep for my faction to grow anymore. I need to wage war against everybody now.

[Seneca Raine]

Thanks for the tips so far! Just finished my first game, went largely magic after getting a solid economy going and cast the spell of making...

..I have one very odd question, though--how exactly do you make new cities? I saw the AI doing it, but I honestly never made my own, just took over theirs lol.

[Didymus]

Build pioneers.

[Didymus]

Pioneers give you the option to build cities or watch towers.

[Seneca Raine]

Originally posted by Dr. Henry Killinger:

Pioneers give you the option to build cities or watch towers.

Ah, okay--I got Arcane Monolith pretty early, and the few pioneers I made created outposts without me looking into it much, had assumed they'd be upgradable to cities later lol. Round two will go much smoother now!

[Sol]

Get a city with 3 Essence as your Military Capital. There are some Enchantments you can give it that make your troops come out of the gate with big buffs.

If a city has at least ONE essence, on round 1 before ending your turn, click your spellbook and see if you can cast Meditation on it.

I tend to build ONE military city with Essence 3 (but it might get to Essence 4 or even 5 by the end of the game). I make all other towns a City or Conclave. City has some late-game upgrades that give all units %HP increases.

USE the Unit Designer to make a new line of troops when you need to.

Don't be afraid to use sacrificial units against dangerous foes. I might send in a hero with 2 units for one battle knowing I will lose and Auto-Battle it. If they deal enough damage, a second unit can come in for the kill.

[phazonfreak]

Originally posted by doki doki! a'go-go:

Here's a few things that are good to know when first starting out:

- The damage dealt and received by weapons and armor will differ depending on it's type. An example is, if chain mail is equipped, a mace will do more damage than a cutting weapon.

One correction. The differing damage types for weapons and defence types for armor are not in effect in Legendary Heroes, all that counts is the single attack and defence value. What you are referring to was in effect in Fallen Enchantress but has been cut for Legendary Heroes to streamline combat.

[Hollow Man]

Been playing for about 8 hours (gave up on one game and started a second). A good game, and some nice tips here. Have three cities going, so now I think it's time to build up my military. I've got a huge ogre like creature walking around that does about 100 points of damage per attack, so I think I'm going to need more than brute force to take him out without losing large amounts of units.

I haven't researched Trade yet, but if I do, do roads automatically show up between my cities? I assume something like this happens, since there are no workers that we can use to micromanage the improvements on any given tile ( a la Civ5).

I really wish the equiv of the "Civlopedia" was searchable. Although it doesn't appear to be as robust as the one in Civ5, it's better than nothing, but it's not fun to scroll through the main subjects to find information. You know, info that in the old days would be in the manual (which thankfully Stardock provided and is ok, but, again, is severely lacking in information)...

-HM

[FoxJaws]

Good tips, wish I had read them before starting to play. :)

[Ego Tempest]

I captured my first city and now the army I used has dissappeared.....does it merge into the city or do I get it back?

[BlackSmokeDMax]

It is just in the city you took over. You can take it out at any time now.