Advice on Avelorn Campaign

[Cleftin Twain]

OK.. I need to know how badly I'm doing and what I can do to change it.. Apparently this campaign is easy cause sisters of Avelorn. But combat isn't my problem, I'm winning battles just fine.

What I'm having trouble with is expansion. I can get the gate battle and Temple of Khaine by around turn 20. But once I do, Tyrion has gobbled up pretty much the rest of Ulthuan. I also seem to get all the Dark elves declare war. Combined with public order problems and constantly having to babysit Temple of Khaine, I can't recover and move to new territory faster than the AI sends stacks towards me.

It's turn 72 as I write this for my current run and I only have the starter province, Saphery, and Nagarythe. I have two gates under my control but those don't count.


Please help me. I never know where to expand early game 😭😭😭

[Sn3z]

You don't even have to expand much if at all and its probably best to let Chrace or Ellyrion colonise the top DE settlements after you have sacked them, so they start to build up those lands for you. What you should do is explore the ocean's for gold have sea battles make contact with Teclis and maybe try to help him expand or go to Brettonnia and kill the vampires, go and help Nagarythe guy expand, I can't confederate with him so I don't bother. I avoid getting into wars with HE, its easy to get everyone to like you on the giant donut looking land and you should try to confederate first the inner rings then outer for safety.

[Cleftin Twain]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

You don't even have to expand much if at all and its probably best to let Chrace or Ellyrion colonise the top DE settlements after you have sacked them, so they start to build up those lands for you. What you should do is explore the ocean's for gold have sea battles make contact with Teclis and maybe try to help him expand or go to Brettonnia and kill the vampires, go and help Nagarythe guy expand, I can't confederate with him so I don't bother. I avoid getting into wars with HE, its easy to get everyone to like you on the giant donut looking land and you should try to confederate first the inner rings then outer for safety.

Thank you. I actually had a run where I confederated with Alith Anar. It was near turn 100 though. I was struggling then too however.

The issue I have with confederation on Ulthuan (the donut) is that Tyrion usually gets them before me. Maybe I'll go help Brets for a bit like you suggested.

If I may ask, how did you decide this was a good approach? I never know where to first try expanding when I start new campaigns and it's caused no end of frustrations.

[Astasia]

I tried Avelorn a few times, hasn't really meshed with my playstyle though. The early game at least is all about diplomacy and spending influence. You can treaty up most of the land mass and use influence to keep the peace, then confederate all of them. It's all very passive for the most part, minus the occasional invader.

[yuzhonglu]

No, Avelorn's all about aggression. I love them (played at least 3 campaigns to turn 100). Here's a very optimal turn by turn play for Mortal Empires.

Turn 1: Take settlement controlled by Kianene. Recruit a melee Lord from taken settlement. Recruit 3 archers.
Turn 2: Take other settlement (thereby taking the province). It'll be a pyrrhic victory, but with your 4 archers you'll win despite being outnumbered. Use the melee lord you hired and the cavalry you started with to flank and scare away the dreadshards (the AI is dumb. Their archers will run away if you scare them with something). The idea is to split their army and have your archers massacre their front line.

Get the recruitment commandment Spend the next two turns healing and hiring archers and spears. Send the melee Lord into the sea to find new people to trade with and to pick up money on the sea.

Once you have the harbor city, set up as many trade routes and Non-aggression pacts ASAP. Later, set up defensive and military alliances. The reason is because you're setting up the AI for confederation by turn 25.

Turn 5: Skip the phoenix gate. Move through the other Gate to the left of the Phoenix Gate.

Turn 7: Attack the Cult of Kianene's capital. Skip the province city nearby. March STRAIGHT TO THE CAPITAL.

You can take the capital with an 18-stack (1 lord, 1 hero, a dozen archers, and your starting units). It'll be a pyrrhic victory, but it can be done.

After that, take the rest of Kianene.

Turn 12-14: Hit Tiranoc or Cothique. They both hate you and there's a good chance that either:

1. Tiranoc has either sent his army across the sea to attack someone else, leaving their province exposed. Or:

2. Cothique is getting crushed by Lothric.

Attack whichever one is weak.

In the process, sign military alliances with your neighbors (Saphrey and people to the right of you) and with Chrace. Once you start a war wit them, they'll join.

Confederation will open up. With Confederation, by turn 25 or turn 30, you can be in control of 4 major provinces and 4 gates.

After that, whatever. Just watch out for Chaos as they're spawn right next to your provinces. I advise killing the Dark Elves with Sisters of Avelorn by in the current game I'm hitting Hexatotl and Vaul's Hammer because they DOWed me.

[TTVV88]

Later in the game you can ask Tyrion to confed with you without too much trouble. You can even sweeten the offer by giving him some extra cash if needed.

When he confederated with me during my playthrough, he had the majority of Ulthuan. So just work on improving relations with his faction and don't worry about his land grabs.

[yuzhonglu]

Main idea with Avelorn early game is skip the Phoenix Gate. Ignore that gate entirely. Your early and middle armies are TOTALLY OP. If you're aggressive enough, you can finish off Kianene easily before turn 18 (with the exception of the gate).

[Astasia]

Rolling through your starting opponent isn't really being "aggressive" and there's no reason to skip phoenix gate. I just played a little bit of Avelorn this morning and at turn 15 I had wiped out Khaine's and confederated Saphery. Everyone else on the island was at high rep and full of treaties and I knew it was just a matter of time to confederate the rest of them so I quit. For any other faction I've tried gaining complete control of 3 provinces is somewhat of a struggle and not something you accomplish in the first few turns of the game. This makes Avelorn super boring to me.

[yuzhonglu]

Fine, call it what you will but it's a lot more optimal then sitting on your butt in your starting province for 30-40 turns, which is what the OP does.

To the OP: Point is, be aggressive. If you think the gate is too hard to take, skip it and beeline for his provincial capital.

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by Lvl One Mage:

Well there is a few reasons:

-Your starting position is very safe you have access to treasure very readily and can level up on sea battles.
-HE economy is very good, hence you don't need to expand.
-Helping other good faction's gives you more LOS for more treaties and gives more trade also gives you even more buffers..
-You have Confederation always at your disposal to counter the lack of aggressive expansion.
-You won't be triggering Chaos event very quickly.
-The map is simply too big to conquer by your self its faster doing with AI factions that you can confederate.

Just a quick tip always take province capitals and let your allies buildup minor settlements that you can confederate with I do this a-lot with Skaven and Orc's so you control the capitals in the regions if you have to civil war. So as example if you go and help Teclis for instance just take all the capitals in Lustria and let him have the minors if you can.

[Cleftin Twain]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

Originally posted by Lvl One Mage:

Well there is a few reasons:

-Your starting position is very safe you have access to treasure very readily and can level up on sea battles.
-HE economy is very good, hence you don't need to expand.
-Helping other good faction's gives you more LOS for more treaties and gives more trade also gives you even more buffers..
-You have Confederation always at your disposal to counter the lack of aggressive expansion.
-You won't be triggering Chaos event very quickly.
-The map is simply too big to conquer by your self its faster doing with AI factions that you can confederate.

Just a quick tip always take province capitals and let your allies buildup minor settlements that you can confederate with I do this a-lot with Skaven and Orc's so you control the capitals in the regions if you have to civil war. So as example if you go and help Teclis for instance just take all the capitals in Lustria and let him have the minors if you can.

That's actually not a bad idea tbh. Not sure when I will use it but it sounds reasonable.

I think my issue is waiting for confederations gets pretty boring for me. I like the idea of going and helping the Brets and Empire and that was my original plan but Tyrion kinda boned that idea a couple of times by declaring war on all of Ulthuan one faction at a time, dragging me into wars and/or killing my allies. Even those he had trade agreements with. Was kinda dumb tbh.

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by Lvl One Mage:

Every campaign is random I guess, but Tyrion, Teclis and Nagaythe are the only factions that really matter at the end of day. You can run three very good stacks off of your starting area and Saphery with many trade agreements with buffs the idea is to be active in different parts of the map so you don't get bored.

I have currently two campaigns going both with Tyrion and Alarielle around turn 60-80. I have two stacks helping Teclis and one in Bretonnia with Tyrion trying to save Louren before he gets wiped.

With Alarielle only one in Bretonnia and another on its way down to Teclis, unfortunately he was wiped out by the Dread Fleet but I trying to get him to rebel in the Star Tower.

I have not experienced Tyrion being like that Saphery or Ellyrion are usually the problematic factions so you need to keep a eye on them and a pretty much all HE and their relations with each other, use the intrigue at court for that information, Ellyrion can declare war on Tiranoc, Caledor and Tyrion some of the time, Saphery will sometimes declare war on Ellyrion, Chrace and even Averlorn when your playing as Tyrion. The ideal situation would be to try and confederate the two inner factions and have a buffer faction around the outer ring so you are protected.