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Topic: I suck at this game

mxb2001
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Joined: 2019-05-20, 18:49
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Location: The land of the thirsty spider
Posted at: 2020-03-08, 19:08

I keep losing to the computer except on some specific maps. I can win on maps with very limited resources (Dolomites for example) but if there is tons of space to build and expand I am dead meat.


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-03-08, 19:13

if you sent us a replay of your failed attempts we might give some tips. Else you could watch some replays from the last tournaments (see the corresponding threads) to get a glue what is necessary.

Edited: 2020-03-08, 19:14

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niektory
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Posted at: 2020-03-08, 20:17

Have you played the campaigns? I think they do a good job teaching various useful game skills.

One thing to try is to pause the game from time to time and take a detailed look at the map and various statistics, so you have a clearer idea what to do and waste less time when unpaused.

But yeah, a replay or even just a savegame would help us to help you.


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king_of_nowhere
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Posted at: 2020-03-08, 20:35

perhaps you are missing some key step in your production chain? are your soldiers getting trained regularly? if yes, you should win at least against the AI. if not, there must be something we can easily fix


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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 15:50

I have played the campaigns, and actually quite a lot of games (dozens) so I do know the details of how things work. The problems seems to be that I am too slow to build things. I suppose pausing the game more often might help some.

I wonder if the trick is to try and build every building as soon as possible. I tend to wait until I need them. Maybe sitting back and reacting to events is not a good way to play this game? Does one need to plan out the whole thing from the start? I'm not big on planning... I like to wait and see what happens.


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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 16:26

Part 2 (sorry don't know how to zip files under linux yet)


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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 16:30

Ah, I see .wrpl files are not allowed to be uploaded... hope it is not needed.


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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 16:55

linux zip seems to be a copy of DOS PKZIP, No problem... face-smile.png


Attachment:
replay.zip (636.6 KB)

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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 18:18

mxb2001 wrote:

I wonder if the trick is to try and build every building as soon as possible. I tend to wait until I need them. Maybe sitting back and reacting to events is not a good way to play this game? Does one need to plan out the whole thing from the start? I'm not big on planning... I like to wait and see what happens.

Tghe goal of the game is either to conquer a specific amount of the map ot to obtain specific objectives (e.g. collectors wincondition is about having the most points which are gained by collecting wapons). To reach this it is importnat ot expand. So you should try to build some sentries or outposts in the beginning. Note: you have more then one builder and it is necessary to use them in parallel. If youi do so you would recognize that you need buuld material so while building the first couple of sentries in every direction you might want to establish a basic economy that produces the material to build anything. After that it is important to find coal, iron and gold and establish a iron and gold insustry. To achieve this you need food. After that you might consider producing weapons and train soldiers to defend your territory.

Planning something ahead is good however even I have to struggle with shortages in the economy because I forgot to build some essential building.

Watching your replay I think you are doing a decision every 5 minutes and that is defi nitly to slow. You don't need to do a 100 clicks per second but one every 5 seconds would help a lot. Remember you have roundabout 10 builders they could work in parallel instead of sitting at home.

But if you want to do it your way you can't play this against any opponent whether Ai or human, so just turn off the opponents and take all the time you want to


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niektory
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Posted at: 2020-03-09, 19:33

OK, I took a look at your replay and immediately noticed that you have plenty of wood but a shortage of blackwood. That's easy to fix: just build more wood hardeners. You have two of them working at 100%, build two more. Or even three, they're cheap buildings at this point and you want to the fix the shortage fast.

In general, you should always keep an eye on your building materials stock, because if you run out of them it'll slow you down a lot. It should usually be your first priority.

After that's taken care of, look at your other easy to obtain raw materials. You have no water, so just build more wells, they're cheap as well and don't even need tools. No reason to not build several more. Later on, if you notice you have enough water and it's clogging up your roads you can stop or dismantle some. Same with wheat, you have zero in stock, so build a few farms.

Then look at the stock of processed products. You're missing rations. There could be two reasons for that: no raw materials to make them or too few production sites. In this case you have meat and bread in stock, but only one inn to process them, so build more taverns. And so on. If you're unsure of how many buildings to build, err on the side of "more".

Go through this process from time to time to ensure you have enough of everything. Pausing the game can help a lot if you're having trouble keeping up, especially if you're being interrupted by enemy attacks.

If you're attacked and it looks you're going to lose, dismantle the attacked building to buy some time. It may also be a good idea to build a fortress or two in advance protecting your main economy buildings in case you need to defend them.

Also, build some more roads so not all wares go through the same flags, clogging them up. I like to build "road rings" around the headquarters, warehouses and other busy places so wares can go around them.


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