FE Play Guide (c/o Ganelon)
From FaitH
Pretty much updated for Rennaissance (Phil)
Contents |
Contents:
- Startup - This is what you should do right at the start of the era.
- Power Score - Understanding this is vital and if you do and follow the principle, you will be a strong attacker.
- Pain - But I have already built all those extra buildings, what do i do now?
- C/D/I - Nothing but Children, Dwarves and Imps! Here's why.
- Population - Keep your population at around (PS/15)+300 (minimum 2000)
- Quest Walkthroughs - these are based on Targar's Library, but Mana-Garmr has since edited and improved them.
- Ar Magica Towers - The lie revealed
- Daughters of Shadow - Skip these for now
- How am I doing? - This gives you a little yardstick to compare how your army is with how it ought to be.
- Towers - No towers! Don't waste your time and money building towers, here's why. (Yes, caveats here)
- Stats - What should I increase with each level-up ?
- Divine Powers - What Divine Powers should I get and when?
- Tower Placement - Read this carefully if you *have* to build towers.
A lot of this only applies up until fission, which is when you get access to new units with trample and heal. The section on "Power Score" always applies and I think is the most important section.
Startup
Starting off the era is pretty rote, there are some things you *gotta* do:
- Explore your province and get the chests!
- Set your WoK (Well of Knowledge) stones to 3 in tax bonus
- Buy the children and imps off of the Unit Tree in the army menu as soon as you can.
Beyond the "gottas", here are my suggestions:
- Set tax to 40%. Then, keep your pop at 2000. 2000 is enough until you get to 28,000 PS or so.
- Build dwarves quickly. This gets you experience so you go up levels and can continue quests.
- Put your first couple of level-ups into intelligence, aim for at least 30 Intelligence to get TR Magica Towers.
- DO NOT BUILD ANY MORE EXPLORERS. We all have plenty for the moment.
- DO NOT BUILD ANY ARMIES BESIDES DWARVES OR IMPS. This is important, but the explanation is a little long and I will post it later.
- DO NOT BUILD NEXUS OF REALITY - at least read the section on daughters of shadow first.
- DO NOT BUILD WATCH OR WAR TOWERS - at least until you read the section on why it's a bad idea early.
- DO NOT BUILD ANY MORE SLEEPING QUARTERS - 3 is plenty for now, read the section on population.
The following are OK to build early on, but not really much else yet. Once you get past 25k PS, you can branch out more.
- Toy Stores/Candy Shops - Help you kidnap/defend Children of Targar
- statues of Emperor - the increased morale is good for troops and income
- Architect Houses - as soon as you can, anyhow (required intel=100). these are awesome, halves building construction time.
Forget the lucky charm fields and wells of lady luck, etc. for the moment.
Power Score
Battle in Faith is a little odd- the developers go to great pains to keep battles "fair." This is implemented by the concept of "power ranges". Currently, you can only attack someone with a PS between .85 and 1.175 of your own. For example, if your Power Score is 10,000, you could attack and get spoils from anyone with a power score between 8,500 and 11,750. It's symmetrical so that anyone who can attack can attack you, and vice-versa. This simple rule has a *profound* impact on how to be a successful player.
Since you only attack people near your own size, there is no real
inherent benefit in having a larger power score. Let me repeat that:
a larger power score is not necessarily good! What matters, and it
really, really matters, is having a strong army for your power score.
You attack people of similar power scores, but the army strength is
what wins the war!
So, what counts towards power score and how much? This is the most
important question in the game!!
The devs don't publish absolute formulas, because figuring it out is
part of the fun, but here's a summary:
- each peon (population), about 1.6 PS (Power Score per niels)
- non-troop buildings (sleeping quarters, war towers, fruit farms, ar magica etc.) published cost/50
- troop buildings (underground network, inn of explorer) published cost/20
- troops (explorers/dwarves) published cost/20
- each level you go up - 75 (per Phil)
- each War Tower - 123 PS (per RagingOrgyNuns)
- each Tech you buy at the Tree of Knowledge (War Towers, Toy Stores, Flocking Fields etc.) published cost/3000
- gold: If you have under 120k in your personal Vault it doesn't add to your PS. If you have 120k or more it will add the total amount of gold/120
So, everything you build adds to PS. If you have a PS of 10,000 with
4,000 PS worth of Lucky Charm Fields and Wells of Lady Luck and only
6,000 PS worth of troops and you fight someone with a PS 10,000 who
has 8,000 PS worth of troops, you will lose! Having as large an army
as possible for your PS is what we call being "lean".
Growing in PS is important and fun, but remaining lean while doing so is
more important and fun. One way to grow is to build up a HUGE population
and tax the crap out of them. But if you do this, your population will
contribute a ton to your power score and make you a popular target for
attacks. A much better, easier, and more fun way is to be a
battle-winning machine, with a very lean army. The income you can
earn by fighting is much more than you can get from taxing. But you
gotta win the battles!
So, be careful what you build. Those ToK buildings will look attractive,
but choose wisely. Ask for advice if you have a question about the
value of a particular building type.
Being "lean" also helps you grow faster because you tend to get more
spoils. Let’s say you find an opponent you can beat, and his PS is
30k. If your PS is 35k, you will get very little for gold for the battle.
If your PS is 31k or 30k (but with the same army!), you will do quite
well for spoils. If your PS is 28k, you will do extremely well.
If you are lean as described in these notes, then early in the game
it will be easy to find "fat" provinces with PS scores greater than
yours whom you can beat. Continuing to do so as you grow will become
more challenging, as the poorer players are weeded out.
While the difference between 28k and 35k for having the same army
as i described in the example above may seem like a lot, having 7000 PS
worth of junky ToK buildings, excess population, and excess troop buildings
is really quite easy.
Another big benefit to being lean is that the good players are looking
for easy targets early on, and you will get attacked a lot less.
They want to attack up also, and will not be able to against you.
You may also get some defensive wins from people with bigger PS who
think they can beat you just because their PS is bigger.
Pain
If you're reading this late and you already have 3 Lucky Charm fields and 7 Sleeping quarters, what to do?
This is gonna be hard, but, DESTROY THEM!
Yes, your PS will drop. Your money spent building them will be lost forever.
BUT - your army will be just as strong, so you will be fighting people of
a lower PS and winning. Winning means good spoils in gold which will
quickly repay you for those buildings. Remember, an era lasts months, not
days. You can re-build the buildings later when it's more appropriate.
This sounds whacky but it's true. The folks in my kingdom looked at me
funny when i first suggested this, but destroyed a few things for me. Sure
enough, things improved, so they destroyed more buildings. When you're
making 100,000 gold per week of battle, those 45,000 GP worth of
buildings you destroyed look a lot less important.
C/D/I
Haha! Niels has hijacked Ganelon's FE guide. Yeah, but old ganny has been thinking about revamping this section anyhow. Wiki is cool :-)
Summary: build ONLY dwarves until you can Children, then build Children until you can build Imps, then build Imps. Only build Children, Dwarves, and Imps before Fission (hence C/D/I)
Here’s why:
There is no difference between children and faeries and dwarves and kobolds, etc., so there is no advantage to having a variety. But there is a distinct and huge disadvantage!
When you start attacking, each general can only hold 3 different types of troops. When you
attack, you ALWAYS want to take your entire army along, because you want to be as strong as
possible, and troops out attacking still help defend home anyhow. There are other things besides
attacking that generals need to be doing - questing, going to the slave market, performing recons, etc. In order to keep generals available to do these tasks, you'd like your attacking army to fit on one general, which means a maximum of 3 different types of troops in your army.
Because you start with dwarves, dwarves will be 1 type. Imps are very important for negating
towers, so that’s a second type. Children are the third type, and I picked them just because they were between Dwarves and Imps. It is VERY important that imps are one of your units, as they can negate towers. If you don't bring imps along, expect to lose to anyone who has built a tower in the direction of your attack.
And, in a while, once you are done exploring your province, you will need something to do with explorers. Well, if you are getting attacked a lot, you should bring about 200 of them along on a second general. They will die before your C/D/I and make recovering from battle a lot easier. If you aren't getting attacked a lot, you should just get rid of them. Yeah, it hurts, but being able to attack up to the top of your range and win convincingly will make it VERY worthwhile. You'll be gaining so much experience and gold that you won't know what to do with it.
So, don’t build Kobolds, don’t build Faeries, or any other unit before fission. If you don’t know what fission is, ask!
When the questing is done, the units become different from each other, but ALL your troops
disappear and you get your money back and you get to re-choose what to recruit, so don't worry
about that right now. It's a long way off, anyhow.
Population
People in this game have varying opinions on population. Personally, I prefer a low-population game. I play and teach an extremely aggressive style of play, so the reduced taxes are more than compensated for by war spoils.
When winning a battle in Faith, in order to receive 100% of the spoils
your would normally get for the battle, your population must be at
least 1/15th of your power score. If it is less, your spoils are reduced
by the factor pop/(PS/15). This requirement is capped at 6000 peons.
Since peons count a lot towards PS (I think about 1.5 each), having a huge
population inflates your PS, making you earn fewer spoils and, actually, lose
more battles because you get attacked more often because you are such a
great target.
My recommendation for the ideal population is about PS/15 + 300, but probably
don't let it drop below 2000. I add the 300 just for
margin. If you attack a lot (as you should!) you will get plenty
of peons from war and never need to flock. And, for Genesis' sake,
don't EVER build any of those horrible flocking increase things like
Lucky Charm Fields of Temple of Faith. (unless you're a merchant, in
which case you have paid and probably already know the game well
enough that my advice is irrelevant)
If you have much more than this, draft those puppies into the army.
In the beginning as genesis, i do get my pop down to 1500 or so just because
i want to recruit every unit i can afford, and chests are your main income
at the beginning anyhow. If you then start attacking, your war spoils will
grow your population faster than drafting ever would, plus you get the tax
money, plus you get the spoils money. And it's fun!
Quest Walkthroughs
New Quest Walkthroughs (FE should refer to Genesis - Pre-fission, and later on to Gigax)
Ar Magica Towers
No longer the bane of beginners, AR Magica Towers are now actually useful. If you have the intelligence to get them, do so. I highly recommend that everyone in the KD build them. Starting off the era with a 32% Terror Resistance can be quite nice, especially for protecting against those early steal ops.
Daughters of Shadow
Daughters of Shadow (DoS) help defend your province while you are out attacking, but when you are below about 100k, they do more harm than good.
Normally, when you are out, if someone attacks you, a "shadow" or your
army will be at home and fight. The defense score of this army will be 100%
of your regular defense, as will the trample and heal. Your attack score,
however, will only be 50% without help.
Each Daughter of Shadow (these units can never leave the castle) adds
.2% to this 50% base up to a max of 90% total. No matter WHAT your
shadow attack score will never be more than 90%. 200 DoS gets you there.
200 DoS also adds about 1500 to your PS, which is untenable for provinces
below 120k PS or so. Even then, it's a lot.
Daughters of Shadow are a luxury to look forward to after you grow. Early
in the era, the inflated PS they give you will stunt your growth significantly
due to the generally reduced spoils you get.
Besides, as a Jack of all Trades, you have access to the spell "Help Shadow
Defense" which does the same thing as DoS, to varying degrees. The spell
required the Book of JoaT Divine Power and costs 350 MP. Pretty cheap, really.
It helps your shadow by a random amount between 20% and 40% for 7 to 11 faith
days. Without adding anything to PS! Note that since you always get 20%,
there is never a real reason to have more than 100 DoS if you have ready
access to the "help shadow" spell.
How am I doing?
Here are a few milestones for how your army ought to stack up versus PS. These are rough numbers, your mileage may vary.
troops = dwarves + imps
the troops vs. explorers has room for a little slop
17,000:
500 troops
350 explorers
1900 peasants
25,000 PS: (some imps by now!)
1200 troops
400 explorers
1900 peasants
40,000 PS
2400 troops
400 explorers
2750 peasants
If your troop numbers are much lower, think about destroying more technology buildings. If they are much higher - SoD me, i have slots open!!
If you follow the C/D/I advice, you will have 0 explorers by the time you are at 25,000 PS. If you get attacked a lot, consider 200 explorers.
Towers
Those of you who've played with me before know I always recommend against towers.
For newcomers, the party line is, "Do not build watch towers or war towers!"
These defensive structures add to your power score, but do not make you stronger, so therefore they make you weaker. My logic on towers goes like this: Someone who knows what they are doing will always have plenty of tower-negating units, which will make your towers irrelevant. Someone who does *not* know what they are doing will never be able to beat you with or without towers if you follow my advice.
Much later in the era, there *can* be an exception to this if you really want to be a defensive player. It involves many war towers, a chaos tower, and using "protect defensive structures" defense. But even that is easily penetrated by someone with "Engineer Workshop".
If you should build towers after all, don't forget 10 War Towers and 10 Watch Towers is the max! There's also Protect Defensive Structure strategy and the Chaos Tower to make your towers harder to negate
CAVEAT - In the early weeks of the era, it can be good to put 2 watch towers in each corner, because many churches do not get tower negators for a couple of weeks or so (on RPG, less real-time on BS). Early on, if you have a decent army and 2 watch towers, you are pretty much invincible against an attacker with no negators. Personally, I sometimes build a couple of towers early on, and then destroy them when negators start showing up. A slight optimization over "no towers ever" perhaps...
Stats
What are good stats to increase?
One of the fun things about the game is picking a specialization and pumping your stats to match. The worst thing you can do is to spread your stat increases evenly over all 4 areas, as none of them will actually become interesting.
You start as 20 everywhere. For a first era, I suggest taking the first two levels in charisma in order to get statues of emperor. Then, as a JoaT, put every level into Intel until you have plenty of MP for hastes, maybe 190 or 200, then start pushing War.
Luck can be interesting, but I'd skip it your first era.
The fact that you can only get the first 4 of each technology tree means you don't get of lot of interesting buildings, but the ones you EVENTUALLY want are: observatory, architect house, and blacksmith. I think most people get blacksmith way too early, as the money would be better spent on troops. Getting blacksmith at 60k PS or so is probably about right, though.
Divine Powers
level 2: Toarwind Headslasher
level 4: Divine Intervention 1
level 6: Divine Intervention 2
level 8: Abduct Children of Targar
level 10: Paul Itik Corek
level 12: Book of JoaT
level 14: Divine Intervention 3
Tower Placement
When you're building towers
- 10 War Towers and 10 Watch Towers is the maximum for 1 corner
- You can make your towers harder to negate by using the Defensive strategy "Protect Defensive Structures" This will multiply your amount of towers by 1.5
fe: you have 6 War Towers and 8 Watch Towers in your NE corner + Protect Defensive Structures. Your enemy will have to negate 6*1.5=9 War Towers and 8*1.5=12 Watch Towers if he attacks your NE corner
Note: The towers only apply for the corner you built them in!
When you're attacking towers
- When you're not attacking blind (you ave a map or some other info) try to calculate how many negators you will need to negate ALL towers of your target. I say ALL towers, leaving one unnegated can be very dangerous as it adds enormous to the defense score of the defender. Leaving 3 unnegated will almost certainly lead to a loss.
In general
- 1 Watch Tower needs 1 negator
- 1 War Tower needs 2 negators (so a War Tower is twice as hard to negate compared with a Watch Tower)
So again the same example (6 War Towers and 8 Watch Towers in your NE corner + Protect Defensive Structures) Your enemy will need 6*1.5*2=18 negators for the War Towers and 8*1.5=12 for the Watch Towers, which makes 30 negators in total!
