10-02-2015, 11:37 PM
This post builds on my earlier post, "A Beginner's Guide to Alamaze," available here: http://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/showt...p?tid=9730
Taking your region can happen as early as Turn 3.[*] This assumes you have no opposition at your city and you get a bit of luck on finding pop centers on T1. More often, however, people will tend to take their regions on Turn 4 or 5 (or even later, especially if you have either opposition or really bad luck). This begs the question... now what?
Some people (I'm looking at you, Lord Diamond) like to hire High Priestesses starting on Turn 4 and then start using orders 790 and 795 to search for artifacts, along with training agents and fanatics to L4 to use the 978 order. Others like to turtle up and do their best to brace for invasion and defend against all comers.
But I believe most people are going to be looking to expand at some point, simply because expanding is the path to either a Rex or Secret Victory Condition win. So how do you do that? Here are some guidelines for targeting your next region. (In the interests of limiting the scope of this article, I'm assuming that you are either in an anonymous game, or do not have a non-aggression pact with your target in a full diplomacy game.)
1) CHECK YOUR RESOURCES. Some Kingdoms just have a stronger setup at game start, and these are more likely to be able to move on a second region more quickly. They have more emissaries, a stronger starting military, or other benefits that allow for faster initial expansion. My own personal ranking is below, obviously others may view these Kingdoms differently:
A) BL, DE, RA. These Kingdoms have a strong set of emissaries, decent influence, decent-to-good militaries (DE is a bit weaker here, but makes up for it on the emissary side), and start in the south which has better production rates in the early game. If these Kingdoms choose to be aggressive, they could certainly try for a second region early.
B) AN, DA, EL, GI. These Kingdoms also have a strong set of emissaries, decent to good influence, good-to-strong militaries (GI being second-best in the game), and it could be argued that some of these are just as good as the category A Kingdoms, but the fact that they suffer a production hit in Winter starting on T5 makes it a bit more challenging, economically. AN is a bit of a special case, in that they have lower starting influence and a weaker emissary corps, but with three Consuls, they can boost their influence faster than anyone, and they can also hire Provincial Governors and promote them to Barons like there's no tomorrow... but the kicker here is that they still need gold to do it, hence the Winter problem.
C) DW, GN, RD, TR. These Kingdoms have different issues, with their militaries RD and TR could go romping through a second region, but with a weak emissary corps, they would have a harder time holding onto their territorial gains. DW and GN have the reverse problem, they have decent emissaries, but their militaries are mediocre and slow, so they run the risk of having their political gains eroded by an enemy military playing defense. I've personally found (and again, obviously others may view this differently) these Kingdoms tend to do a bit better if they've had a few more turns to develop, and once they do, they can really start rolling quickly.
D) SO, UN, WA, WI. Finally, the wizard Kingdoms plus UN are the slowest to develop. They need their wizards and agents to grow in power, and they also could benefit from supplementing their generally weak emissary corps. If any of these Kingdoms can take a region and be left alone to grow for a while, they will be formidable Kingdoms to reckon with in the mid-later part of the game.
2) LAY THE GROUNDWORK. You will want to use the 470 order to work your way up to Friendly reaction level in the region on the turn you launch your invasion with 350's and hopefully group movements. If the region you're targeting is controlled, you may want to look for a "softer" target if the controller has already declared you an Enemy (or even worse, is your Natural Enemy), since that limits your reaction level to Tolerant (Suspicious for a Natural Enemy).
To the extent you've had a little bit of time to develop your resources, that can be very helpful as well. P2 wizards are great for Wards and Sleeps, although beware, some Kingdoms get Ward at P1 and Sleep at P3, in which case having at least a P3 or two might be a big help to an invasion... as always, you have to balance time and money and orders against the opportunity cost in weighing these decisions. Boosting some of your lower-level emissaries to higher-level ones using order 390 is also helpful, as is growing your military a bit.
3) GATHER INTELLIGENCE (general). If you decide to invade a neighboring region, you should be ready to invade hard, as half-measures often tend to suffer in Alamaze, unless perhaps you're in a full diplomacy game and are able to negotiate certain understandings. In order to invade hard, you need to know where the region's population centers are.
The easiest way to do this is to hire a High Priestess on Turn 4, and if your target region is already controlled, divine all pop centers belonging to the controller in that region. If your target region isn't controlled yet, divine all towns in the region (again, this assumes you're laying the groundwork by using order 470 to get yourself toward Friendly by the time you launch your invasion), since towns have more census than villages.
Alternatively, if you're playing BL, GI, or RD, you might be able to save money at the expense of time by moving over squares in that region, but you might also end up giving yourself away to a Kingdom in that region if you land on a pop center at the end of your turn. Finally, a high-level Wizard can unveil the location of population centers in a region, but in the earlier parts of the game in particular, this will probably be out of reach.
4) GATHER INTELLIGENCE (specific). Once you know where your target pop centers are, you also want to scout (via 970, 972, or 888) as many of the pop centers that you plan to move to as possible. This is not a situation where you'll always be able to recon everywhere, but knowing what other emissaries (or groups) are sitting at your key targets is important, more often towns and perhaps even a city if the region isn't controlled yet, or if the controller is asleep at the wheel and has left his city devoid of emissaries and groups. You can often set up these recons both the turn before you invade, and the turn of invasion (where you're hoping no one else has moved into the pop centers you scouted the turn prior).
The power of knowing what's at the pop center is twofold, first it opens up the possibility of casting a 305 Sleep spell on the emissary, second it allows you to gauge risk in terms of whether you want to even try a 320 order or not. If you send a Baron, and see an enemy Prince at the pop center, and you don't have any Sleep spells available, you might want to either sit tight or move to a different pop center, rather than try a 320 and potentially get captured by the angry mob that has been whipped up into a frenzy by the Prince's 310 order.
As always, however, your influence will determine your number of orders, and you may not be able to recon as much as you might want. On rare occasions, I've gone into a region mostly blind, and relied on my target not noticing the emissary's arrival (a Provincial Governor or less has a 25% chance of detection, and a Baron or more has a 50% chance of detection), and/or my influence and emissaries being stronger. But it's a risky thing, because a 310 order from your opponent might cause your emissary to be thrown in jail.
5) USE YOUR MILITARY. It's a huge help to an invasion if you have a credible military threat. Ideally, your military will be stronger, or at least significantly larger, than your intended target Kingdom. Depending on how strong your military is, you could use it to attack or siege (if your opponent doesn't have a credible military response to relieve the siege) the city or cities in the region, or bounce around taking towns or at a bare minimum, villages.
Attacks are often preferable since it flushes out enemy emissaries in the pop center and gives you a chance to capture them (at which time you could either use order 430 to execute them, or you could guard them with order 299 and try to bribe them for skeletons with order 900), but 170/171 is also an option if you really want or need to preserve your brigades, or are afraid of low-level Wizards dying in the attack and don't have the orders to cast 91 Self-Invisible or 101 Guarded Attack with them.
WARNING: Your 170/171 orders will FAIL if the pop center belongs to the regional controller, who is also Friendly in the region, and has declared you an Enemy. This is VERY important, and it is listed in the text of the 170/171 calculator, but it won't factor that into the formula and alert you, so be very careful of this.
You will also want to use your military to engage your opponent's military, again assuming that you're stronger. This is a complex subject worth a detailed post of its own, but without a military, you're at risk of your opponent seeing that you moved an emissary to a town or village, and then moving a group to that town or village the very next turn and then your emissary is trapped there, at risk of capture if the group successfully attacks the pop center! Consider order 732 Intercept when necessary, especially if you have an Intercept radius of 3 or higher.
Finally, even if your military is absolutely horrible (I'm looking at you, UN), you can at least keep your groups at home sitting outside of key pop centers like cities and high-census towns, to help on defense while your emissaries and agents are moving on offense.
6) USE YOUR AGENTS. Not only are Agents useful for recons, but they can also assassinate your opponent's emissaries (a combo of 305 Sleep spell and 940 assassinate can be brutal here, although beware, a well-placed Ward spell by your opponent could turn the tables on you), track your opponent's groups with the 691 or 971 orders, and assassinate your opponent's low-level wizards.
You can also use Agents to sabotage defenses, this isn't always a material benefit in terms of moving the overall needle, but there are times when it can make the difference, either with respect to brigade losses, or maintaining a siege, or lowering that village to under 3,500 or town under 7,000 (or multiples thereof) to make them more susceptible to the higher-level Wizard spells Destroy Town and Destroy Village.
7) HIT FAST AND HARD. The best attacks are launched all on the same turn, hitting as many targets as possible, and NOT going in piecemeal. Have your recons, make sure you've made it to Friendly on the turn you move, flood as many pop centers as possible with your emissaries, send your main group (which was hopefully hovering JUST outside of the region to avoid the regional controller receiving a notice that your group is in their region) to the city if possible, and do everything possible to make the regional controller lose control the very next turn, that way an inevitable enemy declaration won't lower your regional reaction level, plus your opponent will no longer receive the defensive political benefits to both regional control (-15%) and being Friendly (another -15%, since losing control of the region will automatically drop the controller to Tolerant). You also degrade his economy and make him less able to defend against you over the medium-term.
8) BE FLEXIBLE AND OPPORTUNISTIC. Yes, it's good to plan and lay the groundwork, and yes, it's good to develop your resources and really get into a position to hit your enemy hard, but don't cling so tightly to your plan that you become paralyzed when opportunity presents itself. Let's say you learn a neighbor is dropping or about to drop, that's a prime opportunity to race in and pick up some territory without a fight! Or let's say a region other than the one you're looking at is still uncontrolled on T6 or T7, that might be a (much) easier target than the one controlled by RD or GI on T5. Or let's say you find out that your neighbor to the north has sent every single resource against HIS neighbor to the north, and nobody's home defending. Any of these situations could easily warrant a sudden change of direction on your part, watch for opportunities and take advantage of them.
I'm sure I've missed things, but I think that's enough for now. Happy to engage in further dialogue!
[*] In incredibly rare circumstances, DE or GI might be able to take Arcania or Amberland on Turn 2 in a full diplomacy game, but that is a real outlier and I've only heard of it ever being done once, by JumpingFist as DE in Game #157.
Taking your region can happen as early as Turn 3.[*] This assumes you have no opposition at your city and you get a bit of luck on finding pop centers on T1. More often, however, people will tend to take their regions on Turn 4 or 5 (or even later, especially if you have either opposition or really bad luck). This begs the question... now what?
Some people (I'm looking at you, Lord Diamond) like to hire High Priestesses starting on Turn 4 and then start using orders 790 and 795 to search for artifacts, along with training agents and fanatics to L4 to use the 978 order. Others like to turtle up and do their best to brace for invasion and defend against all comers.
But I believe most people are going to be looking to expand at some point, simply because expanding is the path to either a Rex or Secret Victory Condition win. So how do you do that? Here are some guidelines for targeting your next region. (In the interests of limiting the scope of this article, I'm assuming that you are either in an anonymous game, or do not have a non-aggression pact with your target in a full diplomacy game.)
1) CHECK YOUR RESOURCES. Some Kingdoms just have a stronger setup at game start, and these are more likely to be able to move on a second region more quickly. They have more emissaries, a stronger starting military, or other benefits that allow for faster initial expansion. My own personal ranking is below, obviously others may view these Kingdoms differently:
A) BL, DE, RA. These Kingdoms have a strong set of emissaries, decent influence, decent-to-good militaries (DE is a bit weaker here, but makes up for it on the emissary side), and start in the south which has better production rates in the early game. If these Kingdoms choose to be aggressive, they could certainly try for a second region early.
B) AN, DA, EL, GI. These Kingdoms also have a strong set of emissaries, decent to good influence, good-to-strong militaries (GI being second-best in the game), and it could be argued that some of these are just as good as the category A Kingdoms, but the fact that they suffer a production hit in Winter starting on T5 makes it a bit more challenging, economically. AN is a bit of a special case, in that they have lower starting influence and a weaker emissary corps, but with three Consuls, they can boost their influence faster than anyone, and they can also hire Provincial Governors and promote them to Barons like there's no tomorrow... but the kicker here is that they still need gold to do it, hence the Winter problem.
C) DW, GN, RD, TR. These Kingdoms have different issues, with their militaries RD and TR could go romping through a second region, but with a weak emissary corps, they would have a harder time holding onto their territorial gains. DW and GN have the reverse problem, they have decent emissaries, but their militaries are mediocre and slow, so they run the risk of having their political gains eroded by an enemy military playing defense. I've personally found (and again, obviously others may view this differently) these Kingdoms tend to do a bit better if they've had a few more turns to develop, and once they do, they can really start rolling quickly.
D) SO, UN, WA, WI. Finally, the wizard Kingdoms plus UN are the slowest to develop. They need their wizards and agents to grow in power, and they also could benefit from supplementing their generally weak emissary corps. If any of these Kingdoms can take a region and be left alone to grow for a while, they will be formidable Kingdoms to reckon with in the mid-later part of the game.
2) LAY THE GROUNDWORK. You will want to use the 470 order to work your way up to Friendly reaction level in the region on the turn you launch your invasion with 350's and hopefully group movements. If the region you're targeting is controlled, you may want to look for a "softer" target if the controller has already declared you an Enemy (or even worse, is your Natural Enemy), since that limits your reaction level to Tolerant (Suspicious for a Natural Enemy).
To the extent you've had a little bit of time to develop your resources, that can be very helpful as well. P2 wizards are great for Wards and Sleeps, although beware, some Kingdoms get Ward at P1 and Sleep at P3, in which case having at least a P3 or two might be a big help to an invasion... as always, you have to balance time and money and orders against the opportunity cost in weighing these decisions. Boosting some of your lower-level emissaries to higher-level ones using order 390 is also helpful, as is growing your military a bit.
3) GATHER INTELLIGENCE (general). If you decide to invade a neighboring region, you should be ready to invade hard, as half-measures often tend to suffer in Alamaze, unless perhaps you're in a full diplomacy game and are able to negotiate certain understandings. In order to invade hard, you need to know where the region's population centers are.
The easiest way to do this is to hire a High Priestess on Turn 4, and if your target region is already controlled, divine all pop centers belonging to the controller in that region. If your target region isn't controlled yet, divine all towns in the region (again, this assumes you're laying the groundwork by using order 470 to get yourself toward Friendly by the time you launch your invasion), since towns have more census than villages.
Alternatively, if you're playing BL, GI, or RD, you might be able to save money at the expense of time by moving over squares in that region, but you might also end up giving yourself away to a Kingdom in that region if you land on a pop center at the end of your turn. Finally, a high-level Wizard can unveil the location of population centers in a region, but in the earlier parts of the game in particular, this will probably be out of reach.
4) GATHER INTELLIGENCE (specific). Once you know where your target pop centers are, you also want to scout (via 970, 972, or 888) as many of the pop centers that you plan to move to as possible. This is not a situation where you'll always be able to recon everywhere, but knowing what other emissaries (or groups) are sitting at your key targets is important, more often towns and perhaps even a city if the region isn't controlled yet, or if the controller is asleep at the wheel and has left his city devoid of emissaries and groups. You can often set up these recons both the turn before you invade, and the turn of invasion (where you're hoping no one else has moved into the pop centers you scouted the turn prior).
The power of knowing what's at the pop center is twofold, first it opens up the possibility of casting a 305 Sleep spell on the emissary, second it allows you to gauge risk in terms of whether you want to even try a 320 order or not. If you send a Baron, and see an enemy Prince at the pop center, and you don't have any Sleep spells available, you might want to either sit tight or move to a different pop center, rather than try a 320 and potentially get captured by the angry mob that has been whipped up into a frenzy by the Prince's 310 order.
As always, however, your influence will determine your number of orders, and you may not be able to recon as much as you might want. On rare occasions, I've gone into a region mostly blind, and relied on my target not noticing the emissary's arrival (a Provincial Governor or less has a 25% chance of detection, and a Baron or more has a 50% chance of detection), and/or my influence and emissaries being stronger. But it's a risky thing, because a 310 order from your opponent might cause your emissary to be thrown in jail.
5) USE YOUR MILITARY. It's a huge help to an invasion if you have a credible military threat. Ideally, your military will be stronger, or at least significantly larger, than your intended target Kingdom. Depending on how strong your military is, you could use it to attack or siege (if your opponent doesn't have a credible military response to relieve the siege) the city or cities in the region, or bounce around taking towns or at a bare minimum, villages.
Attacks are often preferable since it flushes out enemy emissaries in the pop center and gives you a chance to capture them (at which time you could either use order 430 to execute them, or you could guard them with order 299 and try to bribe them for skeletons with order 900), but 170/171 is also an option if you really want or need to preserve your brigades, or are afraid of low-level Wizards dying in the attack and don't have the orders to cast 91 Self-Invisible or 101 Guarded Attack with them.
WARNING: Your 170/171 orders will FAIL if the pop center belongs to the regional controller, who is also Friendly in the region, and has declared you an Enemy. This is VERY important, and it is listed in the text of the 170/171 calculator, but it won't factor that into the formula and alert you, so be very careful of this.
You will also want to use your military to engage your opponent's military, again assuming that you're stronger. This is a complex subject worth a detailed post of its own, but without a military, you're at risk of your opponent seeing that you moved an emissary to a town or village, and then moving a group to that town or village the very next turn and then your emissary is trapped there, at risk of capture if the group successfully attacks the pop center! Consider order 732 Intercept when necessary, especially if you have an Intercept radius of 3 or higher.
Finally, even if your military is absolutely horrible (I'm looking at you, UN), you can at least keep your groups at home sitting outside of key pop centers like cities and high-census towns, to help on defense while your emissaries and agents are moving on offense.
6) USE YOUR AGENTS. Not only are Agents useful for recons, but they can also assassinate your opponent's emissaries (a combo of 305 Sleep spell and 940 assassinate can be brutal here, although beware, a well-placed Ward spell by your opponent could turn the tables on you), track your opponent's groups with the 691 or 971 orders, and assassinate your opponent's low-level wizards.
You can also use Agents to sabotage defenses, this isn't always a material benefit in terms of moving the overall needle, but there are times when it can make the difference, either with respect to brigade losses, or maintaining a siege, or lowering that village to under 3,500 or town under 7,000 (or multiples thereof) to make them more susceptible to the higher-level Wizard spells Destroy Town and Destroy Village.
7) HIT FAST AND HARD. The best attacks are launched all on the same turn, hitting as many targets as possible, and NOT going in piecemeal. Have your recons, make sure you've made it to Friendly on the turn you move, flood as many pop centers as possible with your emissaries, send your main group (which was hopefully hovering JUST outside of the region to avoid the regional controller receiving a notice that your group is in their region) to the city if possible, and do everything possible to make the regional controller lose control the very next turn, that way an inevitable enemy declaration won't lower your regional reaction level, plus your opponent will no longer receive the defensive political benefits to both regional control (-15%) and being Friendly (another -15%, since losing control of the region will automatically drop the controller to Tolerant). You also degrade his economy and make him less able to defend against you over the medium-term.
8) BE FLEXIBLE AND OPPORTUNISTIC. Yes, it's good to plan and lay the groundwork, and yes, it's good to develop your resources and really get into a position to hit your enemy hard, but don't cling so tightly to your plan that you become paralyzed when opportunity presents itself. Let's say you learn a neighbor is dropping or about to drop, that's a prime opportunity to race in and pick up some territory without a fight! Or let's say a region other than the one you're looking at is still uncontrolled on T6 or T7, that might be a (much) easier target than the one controlled by RD or GI on T5. Or let's say you find out that your neighbor to the north has sent every single resource against HIS neighbor to the north, and nobody's home defending. Any of these situations could easily warrant a sudden change of direction on your part, watch for opportunities and take advantage of them.
I'm sure I've missed things, but I think that's enough for now. Happy to engage in further dialogue!
[*] In incredibly rare circumstances, DE or GI might be able to take Arcania or Amberland on Turn 2 in a full diplomacy game, but that is a real outlier and I've only heard of it ever being done once, by JumpingFist as DE in Game #157.
