Beginner nation and pretender build

[capnbishop]

I've read the manual, I've browsed several beginner guides, and I've reviewed lists of recommended nations for beginners, but I always get stuck on pretender design. I've read the guides on pretender design for beginners, but what I really want is to jump in and start playing the game, then worry about actually designing a pretender later on once I have a better feel for the game.

Could someone please provide a complete recommendation with nation, full pretender design/build, and vague strategy concept (like, "aggressive", or something)?

I'm not looking for something detailed; just "x nation, y pretender build, and z strategy".

The common response to this kind of question seems to be something like, "that depends on your desired play style", or "be inspired!"; but I really just want a pre-built design that I can jump in with and start learning the game. I'll get inspired and figure out my play style later.

Any good recommendations?

[Rockscissors]

You could get 100 answers for this and ill give you 2. I felt just like you. Where do you start? I found one nation I like right off the bat that many don't take in mp games. That was Ur. I then starting using Ur against the AI several different ways. Awake pretender...imprisoned pretender with good scales. Imprisoned pretender with a great bless. Eventually I have played Ur enough to realize they can be played different ways...and during that time I realized why so many people don't like them. They feel underpowered.

So one answer is to pick something that looks interesting and fiddle with them. You really absolutely can play most nations more than 2 or 3 ways. And the game will change anyway...you may find some province with a different kind of mage that can really augment your faction. Your tactics will completely change if you find a province like that.

Ok the 2nd answer. Take Abyssia....imprisoned pretender....max all your scales in the positives the best you can. The beauty of that is you don thave to worry about blesses...and fire magic is about all you will really be concentrating on. Try evocation for your main research path. You will get a feel for the units and the mages and evo fire magic without the stress of of anything else. After 2 or 3 games you will be bored but have more confidence trying out something else...and you will have a good understanding of atleast fire evo magic.

[Stone Dog]

MA Pangea. W9N4 imprisoned Volla of the Bountiful Forest. Dominion 7, Order 0 Sloth 2 Heat 0 Growth 3 Luck 1 Magic 3.
Expand with blessed white centaurs. Later on, use your good troops (white centaurs, revelers, centaur warriors) screened by satyr/maenad chaff. Use Pans to buff everything and centaur hierophants to research. Abuse stealth and forest-recruitable stuff. Don't forget your flying scouts.

Disclaimer: I've never tried this build in a real (MP) game, so I'm not 100% sure on the scales.

EDIT: rush Mother Oak at Alteration 5.

[Staythecourse]

As a newbie, I would suggest no major bless, and no awake expander Pretender. Learning how to expand well with regular national troops is an important step to improving play.

I recommend MA Ulm as the ideal beginner nation. Ulm has the strongest in a straight up fight mundane troops in the game, no sacreds worth considering, and no special tricks. Its mages are both extremely straightforward, and quite powerful. Learn how to arrow decoy while expanding with pikes. Blackplate troops are very, very good: Pikes generally and against indies and low morale enemies, Flails are great with Strength of Giants, and Guardians against enemy sacreds.

Core research and magic are both quite simple. Key spells include Earthpower at Conjuration 3; Earthmeld and Destruction at Alteration 2/4; Magma Eruption/Iron Blizzard at Evocation 6; Strength of Giants at Enchantment 3; and Tempering the Will at Thaumaturgy 5. You want all of them eventually, but which to get first is up to you. Always get Alteration 2 first for Earthmeld, then Conjuration 3 for Earthpower, so your mages have something useful to cast. After that, choose research based on personal preferences and the enemies faced. Alteration if there are giants coming, Evocation if you want lots of mages murdering people, Enchantment if you want fewer mages buffing up your troops, Thaumaturgy if there's someone with lots of astral magic nearby.

Easy starting Pretender is a dormant Keeper of the Bridge Titan, with A4E4N4, dom 5, which leaves +7 scales to play with. Take Production 3, drain 2 (because Ulm mages ignore drain), and arrange the remaining scales however you like, or more dominion if you want. If you want more gems, take Luck 3, or if you want more gold, take Order 3, and Growth is always helpful. The pretender gives nature access, the ability to forge the Staff of Elemental Mastery, and can teleport on top of enemy armies to cast Rain of Stones in the lategame.

Ulm strategy is simple: bulldoze people with troops and mages until you win. Just keep in mind its strengths and weaknesses. Ulm loves manly men in steel armor beating at each other until one side wins, since Ulm has the manliest men and the best steel. Ulm does not like lightning magic which ignores its steel, crossbows that ignore half of the steel, spells that target MR, or sneaky raiders that refuse to fight head on. Ulm also sometimes has trouble against tramplers, though Ulmish troops can often just beat tramplers to death. These strengths and weaknesses sometimes might mean it's best to not fight someone until counters are in place, like researching arrowfend which the Pretender can cast; or it might mean that it's a good idea to go after an enemy immediately before they can get any good magic researched or recruit raiders.

[Angelo Dante]

For me, it was MA Ermor. Full death, full cold, sloth, turmoil, and 3 magic, with as much Dominion as you can work in there (Goal - Kill everything! You won't make friends, but its effective). Ermor dominions kills population in any province, friend or foe, that it has spread to. The cold also causes severe fatigue in regular human soldiers. Master Lich pretender with 9 death and 4 water, with some fire and astral if you like. Get all the death gems you can lay hands on from searching provinces with your Spectator or Dusk Elder mages. Spam souless (zombiezzz) and longdeads (skeletons) until you can build several fortresses to start churning out legionary skeletons and get the wonderful-as-bread Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre, and set them to ramrod the back of an enemy army to wipe out the priests who will be banging away with Banishment eventually.

Not elegant, but fun. You may lose to a harder AI, depending on a few things, but its still an entertaining game, at least to me.

I admit heavy bias - I started on the Dom II demo, playing as Ermor back in the late 90's/ early 2000's. I still like them. Also, I'm not a verteran player, just a more casual one who is getting more practice at the game lately, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

[capnbishop]

These are excellent tips, and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you, all.

[Tomsdeli]

EA Sauromatia Volla of the bountiful forest imprisoned Dom 7 W9N2 O3P1H2G2Mis1M3

buy oripata to expand with. use your prophet to bless the 1st group and pick up a warrior sorceress to bless the later groups that come out. produce soothsayers as well to get your research rolling. 10 sacreds should be able to beat most indy provinces

build palisades all over the damn place. you might want to save a single high resource province in your cap ring to get more sacreds. these forts can now make soothsayers w/o a lab or temple. take said mages and move them to your capital. anywhere that is within 1 turns movement of your cap, minus maybe a single high resource province, should have a forts making these while they run back to your capital. then push the chains farther out as you have gold making sure to always have a lab within 1 turns movement for your soothsayers. this will net you a bunch of super cheap researcher which will let you gain RP in a drastic way.

start shifting labed forts over to enaries sometime around early to mid year 2 for some death casters.

research Tham 2 then ench 5. tham 1 hands you communion slave communion master and tham 2 hands you mind burn. if the AI should go agreesive and you cant beat it with your living sacreds pull all those mages and and script up communioned mind burns with some troops. ench 3 hands you summon skeletons and ench 5 will give you horde of skeletons. have your enaries spam those and if you can get away with it leave the soothsayers researching for as long as you can.

overall point of the build is untilize soothsayers, cheapest mage in terms of raw gold and in terms of infostructure in the game, to research super fast while still being able to use them as battle mages when the time calls for them. otherwise hang your enaries out as battlemages, minus a couple to sitesearch, with skele spam backed with archers maybe a few suaromatian amzons for a front line. you dont really need warrior sorceress for anything but expansion and blessing any sacreds you have as well as sitesearching with a W1 random and the N2 version. your cap mage, witch kings are useful but you dont really ever need them or very few although they can skele spam quite well. i normally dont get them till like year 3 but your milage may vary.

future research can and should include these. conj 4 power of the spheres, light of the northern star, vine ogres, shade beasts. alt 7 eagle eyes, wodden warriors later replaced by mass protection. evo 8 which gets you stellar cascade which you can replace the mind burns with for bigger fights clouds of death, vortex of unlife these last 2 are MR resisted. const 6 thistle maces, water bracelets, robes of the sea, ivy crowns, skull staffs, skullface, UW items as needed, eyes of the void spell focus for spell penatration. ench 8 personal regeneration for communions slaves, relief, mass regeneration which means you wont need persoanl anymore. tham 6 paralyze, soul slay, enslave mind. blood 1 for sabbath master, reinvigoration which you need a cap only mage for. do note their is other stuff on the way im just listing the stuff i mostly use feel free to give it all a shot. i also didnt list those that were early game goals.

EA yomi Great Sage awake Dom 6 A2W2E1S2N2B2 T3G3L3M1

first turn recruit a demon general along with all the rest of your gold into ko/ao/aka oni depending upon which one you like and want to expand with. after the first turn recruit a hannya each and every turn. dont buy more onis until the turn before you need them. you can purchase a few archers if you want but save a bulk of gold for a bunch of 1 resrouce oni and hannyas and at least 1 other fort started by winter at latest. id suggest the bandit version if you do as the resources arnt being used anywhere else and will keep you from over buying archers.

research with the hannya and your pretender Ench 4 Conj 3 which nets you summon skeletons flaming arrows and summon fire power. you will hit those by early spring year 2 or the start of the second year. if you are ready to send out another expansion party take a hannya off of research and summon a mound king with undead leadership to lead the oni. think you have that researched by turn 4 or 5. at this point you can stop recruiting hannya and get sorcs for cheaper researcher or oni generals for cost efficent battle mages.

at this point you can make as many bakamono archers as you can in a turn and pull all your survivng troops you can get w/o wasting time and launch a assult vs the AI. make sure and bring fire gems to have a hannya cast flaming arrows, which will take 2 per casting with summon pheonix power so try and use it only when you are about to fight a decent sized army or you will run out of gems in your rush, and the rest of your hannya set to summon skeletons backed with whatever archers you bought and had close to your attack point.

or if you dont feel you can rush a easier opponet, which you might not have the experiance to know which would be esier, just push twords const 2 ench 6 which will get you horde of skeletons and reanimate archers corpse constructs and lighting rods to get 4 constucts per air gem. if you go this route forting up a few more province can help get you more battle mages or lab rats.

the focus of the build is to try and limit your troops, who have chaos power, effects upon your overall game plan and instead bring your very good mages to bear with superior magical spells already researched. your pretender as well bring a wealth of sitesearching and forging options and summon options including some national mages. sitesearching is best done by a E2 sorc a hannya and your pretender once your key research goals have been hit as far as your pretender is concerned.

other goals threw out the game. conj 9 dia tengu, nushi, well of misery. you need a swamp to be labed to get nushis but you have a wealth of summoning power in this tree. how much and what types of gems you spend is up to you and what you want gems for forging. alt 6 earth meld, maws of the earth and darkness for battlefield spells while temper flesh, invlurability, soul vortex for thugs SCs. evo 7 fireballs, shadow blasts, earthquakes, rain of stones. const 6 nets you most of the boosters, you will cross your fingers for master of the shadow blossom in order to do some light blood hunting to empower then forge blood stones which is really the triky one. all thug/SC gear. bottles of living water, fires in a jar, lightless lanterns. you can use your dia oni as SCs thugs or big battle mages.

[Speleothing]

Don't try to learn how to play the game with any of the 'Freespawn' nations. They play very differently than everyone else and you won't learn how to play well before you get overwhelmed. UW nations are also not necessarily easy.

So definitely avoid playing these while you're learning
EA Therodos
MA Ermor
MA Asphodel
LA Lemuria
LA Ryleh

[Staythecourse]

Yeah, popkill nations are bad for beginning play because they don't teach basics. Also, sacred giant nations should be avoided too, because they teach bad habits. The AI is unable to deal with sacred giants effectively, making terrible tactics seem like good ideas.

Mainly Niefelheim and Ashdod. Other sacred giant nations aren't quite so good at teaching bad habits.

[Maid Laika]

sounds like your getting a hundred answer so I'll throw in two more, both examples using EA Ermor with two scale builds

1. Imprisoned Statue of war F9 E2 Dom7 O3 P2 Neutral Temp, G3, Misfortune 1, Magic 1
this build is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cheap now thanks to recent patch that you can get great scales and a decent major bless on the cheap. Main goal is to use your sacred equites backed up with some tower shield inf to expand rapidly and with these scales you can really pump out tons of troops/mages and focus on your natural magic paths in full (fire, astral, death). This build limits your magic paths to your native ones but I feel for a beginner taht's fine. Focus on evocation and Alternation with some enchantment/conjuction.

2.Imprisoned Titan of the Sea W9, E2, Dom 6, O3, P2, Heat 1, G3, Misfortune 1 Magic 0
Alternate scale build with a mobile chassis instead. I feel water Bless alwyas works better then fire bless for sacred cav and should make expansion even easier, however your scales are slightly worse and you lose the extra Resarch boost with no magic 1. Strategies are the same but now you have the ability to expand underwater assuming no Underwater nations to challange you, Plus with strong conjuction research you can breat into water magic very easily.

one thing to note is I always pick misfortune 1 with Rome because all your mages have natural fortuen telling which reduces the chances of bad events. However you can get extra risky and go misfortune 2 so you can bump up earth or another scale into the positve. It's all up to you.


Last words: ermor mages are the prime example of human mages strengh/weakness: easy to mass, all with astral so easy communions, but Squishy and old so easy to die to on point evocation or Earthquakes/RoS/etc. Guard them well or equip them well

[kzickas]

When it comes to pretenders scales give raw power, while magic and even blesses are more specialized. For a beginner I'd suggest going with an imprissoned immobile with good scales and high dominion (to push those scales out). Once you get a grip on the game it becomes easier to pick out what you want to supplement your nation with.

For beginner nations I'd suggest pangaea, any age, or EA or MA ulm.