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AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

and just to be clear because the tutorial confused me a tiny bit with it:
A city automatically extracts the FIDS value from the six hexes surrounding it, plus the hex it is in (but modified from what the hex originally showed on the map);
By building a district, it will modify the income from the hex the district goes on, but extend the area the city automatically extracts from by three hexes, but also lowers city happiness by 10;
Having workers lets you assign them to a specific FIDS output, thus increasing that output. This happens regardless of the size of the city or the FIDS output of the hexes under its sovereignty.

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Spanish Matlock
Sep 6, 2004

If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

and just to be clear because the tutorial confused me a tiny bit with it:
A city automatically extracts the FIDS value from the six hexes surrounding it, plus the hex it is in (but modified from what the hex originally showed on the map);
By building a district, it will modify the income from the hex the district goes on, but extend the area the city automatically extracts from by three hexes, but also lowers city happiness by 10;
Having workers lets you assign them to a specific FIDS output, thus increasing that output. This happens regardless of the size of the city or the FIDS output of the hexes under its sovereignty.

Yeah, civilians are assigned to F/I/D/S/I production directly instead of extracting them from specific tiles of the city. There's also techs that give you better per-population generation rates, and ones that give you better per-tile generation rates, so you want to consider what works better for your race, whether you're wide with a lot of tiles or tall with a lot of population.

Also districts generate happiness once you upgrade them to level 2, which you do by surrounding them with at least four districts. So you want to factor that into your city building, build your city into triangles, like so:

code:

  X
 X X
X X X

To maximize your number of level 2 districts. (Note: The cultists can go to level 3, if you surround a district with 4 level 2 districts.)

Additionally, the size of your population affects how big you can build your city, you need 2 pops per district.

quote:

From the few guides I've read, and attempting it out in single player, Vaulters can get a really strong early game lead that can snowball out of control. They can jump to Second Age before turn 20 pretty easily (thanks to their starting science bonuses), which means that can get level 2 empire edicts (or whatever they're called, haven't played in a while), from there it really sets you up for the rest of the game.

EDIT: Also I didn't realise they released the Endless Legend artbook for free if you've got the game, love the artwork in this game

Actually one of my favorite things about the Cult is that they have so much influence and only one city you can just buy the whole chart every time policies come up.

Spanish Matlock fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Dec 27, 2017

Spanish Matlock
Sep 6, 2004

If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.
[Quote is not edit]

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Spanish Matlock posted:

Yeah, civilians are assigned to F/I/D/S/I production directly instead of extracting them from specific tiles of the city. There's also techs that give you better per-population generation rates, and ones that give you better per-tile generation rates, so you want to consider what works better for your race, whether you're wide with a lot of tiles or tall with a lot of population.

Also districts generate happiness once you upgrade them to level 2, which you do by surrounding them with at least four districts. So you want to factor that into your city building, build your city into triangles, like so:

code:

  X
 X X
X X X

To maximize your number of level 2 districts. (Note: The cultists can go to level 3, if you surround a district with 4 level 2 districts.)

Additionally, the size of your population affects how big you can build your city, you need 2 pops per district.


Actually one of my favorite things about the Cult is that they have so much influence and only one city you can just buy the whole chart every time policies come up.
Oh awesome, sweet, I am glad I asked, thank you!

Is it a really bad thing to build a district on hexes with anomalies? I founded my first city on a hex that borders four (!) hexes with anomalies and now I'm worried the crazy production that I am getting out of these anomalies will be ruined.

Also, I Parleyed with a minor faction and they gave me a mission to destroy another minor faction, which happens to be a minor faction that I wanted to assimilate. Now that i got the kill mission I cannot parley with the targeted minor faction - is there any way for me to quit the kill quest?
edit: re: the minor faction kill quest: I loaded an autosave.

Now I am curious how to re-see what bonus the minor faction grants if I assimilate them lol

AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Dec 27, 2017

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

doublepost: oh good, the game has lovely Civ5 style annihilation combat, uninstalling!

Ruzihm
Aug 11, 2010

Group up and push mid, proletariat!


AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

doublepost: oh good, the game has lovely Civ5 style annihilation combat, uninstalling!

annihilation combat? Not sure if I understand but if your troops are fast & your opponents have short enough range, you can outmaneuver them until combat ends and your troops will still be there

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Ruzihm posted:

annihilation combat? Not sure if I understand but if your troops are fast & your opponents have short enough range, you can outmaneuver them until combat ends and your troops will still be there
Thats not fun gameplay. Theres no way to avoid the combat or retreat from it onceit starts, and its annihilation combat? Not interested. Its that simple.

Ruzihm
Aug 11, 2010

Group up and push mid, proletariat!


AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Thats not fun gameplay. Theres no way to avoid the combat or retreat from it onceit starts, and its annihilation combat? Not interested. Its that simple.

I'm still not sure what you mean by annihilation combat. Do you mean to suggest that every autoplayed battle ends with at least every unit on one side dying?

It's been a while since i've played EL but iirc battles can end in a stalemate even if you autoplay it, although it often requires that both sides have more health than they have damage.

If both armies consist of units with damage on par with their health (which is pretty much the case with all units in the early game except for heroes and i think the starting units for the broken lords and some minor faction units), yes, it will probably result in an annihilation.

I rather liked it as it makes putting your hero in your exploration army a justifiable choice vs having them govern for an accelerated start.

Edit: Also, the defender has the opportunity to retreat before the battle starts at the cost of half of the health of the retreating units but the attacker may attack the retreating army on the world map with another unit of course

Ruzihm fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Dec 27, 2017

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Its a combination of fights are to the death* (unless the fight lasts 6 rounds or whatever arbitrary number they set up) and also that if a unit loses all its health in combat it is destroyed. Its simply the worst kind of combat you can have; in the history of combat in all the world's history, less than 1% of all battles fought resulted in 100% of one side of the battle being completely annihilated. Its bad. Its personal preference and I am loving obnoxious about it but I see no reason to keep playing the game if that is what I have to deal with. It already feels too much like Civ5 so :shrug:

ninjewtsu
Oct 9, 2012

I always felt like I saw a victory that left enemy units still alive far too often.

Also I always thought the broken lords were the tryhard winhard faction

Ruzihm
Aug 11, 2010

Group up and push mid, proletariat!


AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Its a combination of fights are to the death* (unless the fight lasts 6 rounds or whatever arbitrary number they set up) and also that if a unit loses all its health in combat it is destroyed. Its simply the worst kind of combat you can have; in the history of combat in all the world's history, less than 1% of all battles fought resulted in 100% of one side of the battle being completely annihilated. Its bad. Its personal preference and I am loving obnoxious about it but I see no reason to keep playing the game if that is what I have to deal with. It already feels too much like Civ5 so :shrug:
Fair enough :). if you bought through steam you can have support automatically give you a refund if it's still fresh in your library (I think 2 weeks is the limit) and you haven't logged too many hours ingame (i think 2 is the limit).

ninjewtsu posted:

I always felt like I saw a victory that left enemy units still alive far too often.

Also I always thought the broken lords were the tryhard winhard faction

I never got around to raising the difficulty above normal but my friends and I thought broken lords were.........overpoweringly broken :grin:

Avasculous
Aug 30, 2008
Wait, your objection is literally that units/armies get destroyed in combat? Are there any 4x games where that isn't the case?

The only ones I can think of that are even close to fitting that bill are the Total War games, where armies take heavy losses, get routed, and then more-often-than-not destroyed (sorry, annihilated) by a follow up attack in the same turn.

Maybe you could square it with your headspace by saying: "just as the 9 guys you have on the field are an abstraction rather than the literal size of your army, their annihilation is just an abstraction of the fact that they've been routed and reduced to below fighting strength, rather than 100% killed." ?

I could be wrong, but I think a 4x game where battles never caused armies to take more than a historically-accurate 5-10% casualties would not be very popular.

Squiggle
Sep 29, 2002

I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.


Ruzihm posted:

Fair enough :). if you bought through steam you can have support automatically give you a refund if it's still fresh in your library (I think a week is the limit) and you haven't logged too many hours ingame (i think 3 is the limit).

Just for accuracy: Within 14 days of purchase, and no more than 2 hours playtime - although they say they may still grant one if your reasoning is good enough.

Ruzihm
Aug 11, 2010

Group up and push mid, proletariat!


^^^ you caught me pre ninja :argh:

Avasculous posted:

Wait, your objection is literally that units/armies get destroyed in combat? Are there any 4x games where that isn't the case?

Yeah, to me it's pretty standard 4x gameplay where your units can't retreat immediately once they engage without taking losses, and the only option once shots start being fired being to outmaneuver them until you buy enough time for an escape to be secured.

The reason you don't have annihilation irl is because the loser will try to outmaneuver the winner until they can secure an escape. :shrug: And in ancient times, captured survivors weren't released to their people as often as they were just sold into slavery, so that would be a pretty immersive assumption to make about the 95% of your units that surrender when your unit hits 0 hp.

Ruzihm fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Dec 27, 2017

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Thats not fun gameplay. Theres no way to avoid the combat or retreat from it onceit starts, and its annihilation combat? Not interested. Its that simple.

I'm not sure why not being able to retreat before the battle starts is a problem, since you can just retreat before the battle instead. You can retreat twice without being destroyed pretty often if you're at full health (probably depends on your regen?), which should be enough to run away. And later on in bigger fights, it's common for neither side to get completely destroyed.

I also remember kiting some melee minor faction units with cultist preachers until the battle ended, fwiw.

...what does "annihilation combat" have to do with Civ5, anyway? Did you mean 4?

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

I'm not going to poo poo up the thread with quotes and replies about my personal preferences. Feel free to laugh at me because I'm neurotic, it doesnt bother me.

I'm just tired of the same old poo poo. These games (4x games) havent changed in decades and I just dont like it anymore. Someone needs to innovate something more fun and intuitive. I hate spending 10+ turns building some of these military units that then, in one unlucky battle, are gone forever. I cant "abstract that away" in my head, its just too stupid to me. I'm not knocking anyone who it doesnt bother or who likes it, I just cant stand it.

I've had the game too long to refund it, but I got it on sale and I think I like the rest of it so I may still give it a try since so many of you have said how good it is.


Staltran posted:

I'm not sure why not being able to retreat before the battle starts is a problem, since you can just retreat before the battle instead. You can retreat twice without being destroyed pretty often if you're at full health (probably depends on your regen?), which should be enough to run away. And later on in bigger fights, it's common for neither side to get completely destroyed.
Except there isnt a retreat button that I can find in the pre-battle screen? The tutorial doesnt cover a single thing that you are pointing out, though, so I'll keep that in mind if I give it another go.

Staltran posted:

...what does "annihilation combat" have to do with Civ5, anyway? Did you mean 4?
I mean Civ5. You can have a high-veterancy unit that, if your opponent points enough units at it, evaporates forever. The game is designed so that you can move in one big killstack and just nuke anything that comes into sight and its gone, and that is what I feel is bad and unfun gameplay. But again, that is just by (likely bad) opinion.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Regarding non-fatal combat, I think there's maybe half a dozen video games in the history of all video games that feature historically accurate army-level defeat mechanics. Perhaps. If it's your foible, fine, but just realize there's like 500 other abstractions which are far more jarring, ie literally anything to do with cities.

For the Endless X games, there is a retreat button in the pre-combat screen, if you have an "action point" left. Every unit only has one action point, and it's expended by being an aggressor in combat, or retreating. Retreating costs 60% of a unit's maxhp, so in order to route an army that doesn't want to fight you, you will need to hit it with two stacks (separately, de-select them in the precomat reinforcements screen), once to force the retreat, the second time to kill/route them. Or just hit them with the same stack multiple turns until they don't have the 60% hp left to run. Obviously, as the aggresor you don't have the option to retreat as you spent your action initiating the attack. Armies that are besieging also cannot retreat, for gameplay exploit reasons.

edit: Civ5 has one-unit-per tile. Civ4 had doomstacks.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー

Spanish Matlock posted:

Also districts generate happiness once you upgrade them to level 2, which you do by surrounding them with at least four districts. So you want to factor that into your city building, build your city into triangles, like so:
code:

  X
 X X
X X X

To maximize your number of level 2 districts. (Note: The cultists can go to level 3, if you surround a district with 4 level 2 districts.)

Note that this isn't the only way. A slightly different way is in a line 2 hexes wide.
code:
X   X   X   X
  X   X   X
This sometimes isn't viable due to terrain/etc, but it's worth noting since each district placed results in an immedeate lvl2 upgrade. The 'line' will have 4 lvl1 districts at the endzones, compared to a completed triangle's 3 dead zones, but the triangle has huge downtime when expanding to a greater size of triangle compared to the line's method of smoothly getting teir2's. Also, possibly more importantly, it has a higher amount of exploited tiles // surface area.


edit:

Blooming Brilliant posted:

From the few guides I've read, and attempting it out in single player, Vaulters can get a really strong early game lead that can snowball out of control. They can jump to Second Age before turn 20 pretty easily (thanks to their starting science bonuses), which means that can get level 2 empire edicts (or whatever they're called, haven't played in a while), from there it really sets you up for the rest of the game.
Oh yea I totally forgot about that, it's been ages. Public service announcement: the teir2 'Science" empire plan, which is -33% industry costs on buildings, is nuts. This applies to districts too, so it's basically a flat 50% industry boost, which is insane and causes all sorts of snowballs. Applies to building world wonders, too...

Serephina fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Dec 27, 2017

Avasculous
Aug 30, 2008

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I'm not going to poo poo up the thread with quotes and replies about my personal preferences. Feel free to laugh at me because I'm neurotic, it doesnt bother me.

We're only scoffing because while there's many specific design choices not to like in Endless Legend, you've chosen something that it shares with the entire genre, and that is frankly not much of a choice at all, since the alternative of armies being able to retreat without penalty or having to whittle away at each other for several turns to inflict real losses sounds incredibly tedious.

I don't really like FPSes, but it would be kind of silly for me to zip into the Counterstrike thread and say the game's poo poo specifically because it has 'Unreal Tournament 2004-style bullet sponging', by which I mean of course the wildly unrealistic way players survive being shot once or twice with most of the weapons.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Avasculous posted:

I don't really like FPSes, but it would be kind of silly for me to zip into the Counterstrike thread and say the game's poo poo specifically because it has 'Unreal Tournament 2004-style bullet sponging', by which I mean of course the wildly unrealistic way players survive being shot once or twice with most of the weapons.
Thankfully I didnt say the game was poo poo, I simply said it wasnt for me! It seems like a fine game with combat mechanics that I abhor.
  • The game's tutorial gave little info on combat (as I already mentioned probably more than once).
  • The combat screen(s) give very little feedback to the player.
  • The wiki is poo poo.
  • The in-combat controls are rather obtuse and dont often do what you think they will do.
I played the game for a couple hours, and ended up in a few fights. I got wiped each battle, as the defender, with numerical superiority. In each battle I lost my entire army, never seeing a way to retreat or preserve my forces to try to look for better terrain or wait for reinforcements; I was simply annihilated because of the way combat works. Its not for me.

Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.
It kind of depends on the terrain and forces involved, but it's 100% possible to make a fighting withdrawal over the 6 combat turns to live and fight another day.

Perhaps try playing as the Roving clans, their armies tend to rely on horse archers whittling the enemies away with skirmish tactics.

PS. Although from what you've written, it's more of a case of being salty after being stomped? You just need to figure out the terrain and grok how the combination of manually selecting hexes and AI behavior setting makes the units follow your will exactly and you're set to go. Basically, the more glass cannon-y your units are, the more made or broken they are by microing orders.

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
Getting wiped with numerical superiority sounds like you've made the same mistake my friend did: Do you know that units can be upgraded and retrofitted, and their starting equipment obsoletes very fast? Click the fist icon at the top left and play with unit designs & gear loadouts, and then on the map you can select your army and a retrofit option is available if you're in friendly territory.

My mate got around not knowing about the gear system by just building Titans, heh.

Promethium
Dec 31, 2009
Dinosaur Gum
Did you equip/upgrade your unit designs? Putting a full set of iron armor on them even before any techs will just about double their hp and make it much less likely to wipe. With the way that combat works in EL, a horde of weak units will fail to make a dent against a few strong units.

edit: beaten, but certainly that's something the game doesn't warn you about outright so I didn't understand it the first time I played, nor does it explain pop assignment so I kept wondering why production was so slow.

Promethium fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Dec 28, 2017

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

Units shouldn't generally take very long to produce either, you should be building them in pure production based cities, or buy them out using Dust. It's pretty tough when you don't know about how or what you should be prioritizing with cities and techs, but that's just part of learning the game.

Also of note is that Heroes don't die, they just have some downtime if they are defeated. Meanwhile, units dying isn't generally the end of the world because they don't 'veteran' like they do in Civ games. They can even fall behind on the XP curve because of tech and building upgrades, meaning sometimes you can be producing higher leveled units than you already have running around.

If you post a savegame prior to the combat, pretty much anyone who has played the game for a while can likely tell you what you're missing.

Avasculous
Aug 30, 2008

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

Thankfully I didnt say the game was poo poo, I simply said it wasnt for me! It seems like a fine game with combat mechanics that I abhor.
  • The game's tutorial gave little info on combat (as I already mentioned probably more than once).
  • The combat screen(s) give very little feedback to the player.
  • The wiki is poo poo.
  • The in-combat controls are rather obtuse and dont often do what you think they will do.
I played the game for a couple hours, and ended up in a few fights. I got wiped each battle, as the defender, with numerical superiority. In each battle I lost my entire army, never seeing a way to retreat or preserve my forces to try to look for better terrain or wait for reinforcements; I was simply annihilated because of the way combat works. Its not for me.

Yeah in fairness, the combat is by far my least favorite part of EL, exactly for the reasons you gave here and not because "units get destroyed". It sounds like your mind is made up, but if you change your mind and come back to it, the other posters gave some really good tips.

To underline their points about upgrading, the combat math in EL (which is, agreed, needlessly obtuse) works out to reward dividends for shifting the Attack : Defense ratio. If their defense is higher than your attack, you'll often do laughable damage to them, and the higher their attack is than your defense, the higher the probability of them critting for 2x damage and 1-shotting your units. Note also that many of the weapon upgrades given massive % modifiers to fighting specific units, like +25% damage to Melee units or -50% damage from Ranged units. The AI is really vigilant about upgrading its units (one of the few things it's good at), so if you're neglecting that or aren't at all, that's almost certainly why you were getting stomped.

Another factor that's given bizarrely little visual indication for its importance is morale. There are pips at the base of units indicating their morale, and IIRC, each pip adds 15% to the attack and defense of the unit. You get pips for adjacency with friendlies and lose pips for adjacency with enemies (so surrounded units suck). There's also strategic modifiers to them, like spies have an ability to hose someone's morale in every battle for the next X turns.

Finally, this is a lot more visually obvious, but unit experience level is huge, with each level giving something like +25% to all stats. I.e. just a few levels makes a unit 2x as powerful across the board.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Here's an EL combat pro-tip: pick a faction with a non-poo poo ranged unit (Wind Walkers) rush upgraded 2H bows for them, ignore all other unit types. If you're playing a faction without non-poo poo ranged units, find the Hurnas (the orcs with bows) and assimilate them to build their units. Then just focus-fire motherfuckers.

EL combat is kinda poo poo.

Megazver fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Dec 28, 2017

cerious
Aug 18, 2010

:dukedog:

Megazver posted:

Here's an EL combat pro-tip: pick a faction with a non-poo poo ranged unit (Wind Walkers) rush upgraded 2H bows for them, ignore all other unit types. If you're playing a faction without non-poo poo ranged units, find the Hurnas (the orcs with bows) and assimilate them to build their units. Then just focus-fire motherfuckers.

EL combat is kinda poo poo.

Honestly you could just upgrade weapons and armor for a single stack and just auto-complete combat. Your dudes will hardly take damage if the discrepancy in equipment is large enough.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

cerious posted:

Honestly you could just upgrade weapons and armor for a single stack and just auto-complete combat. Your dudes will hardly take damage if the discrepancy in equipment is large enough.

Yeah, that's for when you've pulled ahead. The bows are crucial, the armor is 'when you can', the auto-complete's for when you're on a roll.

Rhjamiz
Oct 28, 2007

Or just fight the Necrophage way; choke them with chaff until one of your heroes gets the army upkeep discount, then hit your tier 2 army upkeep discount and have armies of 20+ Battleborn absolutely free! Upgrades? Nah. Unit limits? What's that?

Spanish Matlock
Sep 6, 2004

If you want to play the I-didn't-know-this-was-a-hippo-bar game with me, that's fine.

Serephina posted:

Note that this isn't the only way. A slightly different way is in a line 2 hexes wide.
code:
X   X   X   X
  X   X   X
This sometimes isn't viable due to terrain/etc, but it's worth noting since each district placed results in an immedeate lvl2 upgrade. The 'line' will have 4 lvl1 districts at the endzones, compared to a completed triangle's 3 dead zones, but the triangle has huge downtime when expanding to a greater size of triangle compared to the line's method of smoothly getting teir2's. Also, possibly more importantly, it has a higher amount of exploited tiles // surface area

So that's true enough, but if you're playing Cult you want to to go triangle and turn it into an hourglass to get that sweet sweet level 3 district going on.

Krinkle
Feb 9, 2003

Ah do believe Ah've got the vapors...
Ah mean the farts


if you make a bar of 2 Burroughs wide, they all turn to 3 except the tips? What's this triangle nonsense?

Slaan
Mar 16, 2009



ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH
It doesn't work as well if the terrain or province borders are weird, and won't give you level 3 districts on the races that can do that

Rhjamiz
Oct 28, 2007

Slaan posted:

It doesn't work as well if the terrain or province borders are weird, and won't give you level 3 districts on the races that can do that

It will tho? It will form a layer like 12321 more or less.

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib
Yeah for cult in particular a rectangular city seems better than a triangular one? Unless I'm screwing something up triangle will have 3 level one districts and 6 level two districts at the tips, while a rectangle will have 4 level one districts and 4 level two districts at the ends. That seems pretty equivalent, but the rectangle will exploit more hexes, and a big triangle can be pretty unwieldy with region borders/ruins. Also grows more smoothly than adding another layer to a triangle. And if your rectangle runs out of space it's not the end of the world to make a turn, is it? Cba to figure out how many district levels that loses.

Did they change something about the luxury market/how often the AI buys stuff from it? There seems to be much less available than before the Morgawr were added.

Rhjamiz
Oct 28, 2007

In addition, after the initial start, every new borough will cause a district to level up in the stick formation, where the triangle has lag time between level ups

Staltran
Jan 3, 2013

Fallen Rib
Really I'd say a triangle makes sense if you know you're going to get between 6 and 10 districts total (including city center). 5 additional districts for a total of 6 is a pretty decent goal for later cities, that's 10 population or 8 population and a winter borough or something. With the exponential food requirements for each pop (and the linear scaling on borough cost) you probably don't want to go past that on most cities, so the 6-district triangle is very efficient. With 6 districts a triangle gets a total of 9 district levels and a line 8, and happiness-wise a triangle is... -5, right? And a line -20? And a 7-district line is still just -15, and a 8-district line -10? And a line would only equal the 6-triangle at 9 districts happiness-wise, but then the 10 district's +15 compared to the 10-line's +0. That's a pretty significant difference. Though when you're expanding the triangle at 7 districts you've basically got a 7-line with one exploitation less or something, similarly at 8 and 9. So I guess it doesn't really matter unless you're going to stop at 6 or 10, and if you're getting 10 preferably going from 6 to 10 in a burst?

But if you're cult or necro or otherwise want to make a big city you probably should go for a line, I think. Or just stick with a 10-triangle, that seems good too. A 15-district triangle seems like it would be a bad idea. Lines are also often easier to get to a sea tile for ship/cargo dock access, I think. (The latter of which can also fill in for a level 1 district, in addition to the 10 happy and sea trade access, and of course the industry but if you've only got one sea tile that's pretty small.)

Sorry if those paragraphs are a mess, I've rewritten them a couple times while flip-flopping on how good lines/triangles are relative to each others so I've basically managed to confuse myself.

Random thought: It's annoying how the AI doesn't seem to ever build cargo docks even if they have the tech. After I won an economic victory as Allayi on a 2-continent map I conquered one coastal city on the other continent and built a cargo dock there, and my dust income jumped from 40k to 60k as my smugglers (Roving Clans hero in the capital, other cities had to stick with my continent+conquered city since the guys I took it from still cut it off) finally got access to the continent.

Rhjamiz
Oct 28, 2007

Speaking of Roving Clans, I like Lumeris in ES2 and I've always wanted to learn Roving Clans in EL as the sort of... counter-balance to my Necro play. But is it me or do they just... suck? Banning people from the market makes you a target and they can't compete with the Broken Lords for sheer dust production. How the hell am I supposed to play them?

Serephina
Nov 8, 2005

恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー
No idea mate! But relocating into better provinces seems nice. Probably abuse that when you find a place with 5 clustered anomalies.

Rhjamiz
Oct 28, 2007

Serephina posted:

No idea mate! But relocating into better provinces seems nice. Probably abuse that when you find a place with 5 clustered anomalies.

That does sound nice. And you can rearrange all your districts too I think.

Tho I miss the days when you could stall a game by sailing your city off into the ocean, before navies were a thing. :v:

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Lichtenstein
May 31, 2012

It'll make sense, eventually.

Rhjamiz posted:

Speaking of Roving Clans, I like Lumeris in ES2 and I've always wanted to learn Roving Clans in EL as the sort of... counter-balance to my Necro play. But is it me or do they just... suck? Banning people from the market makes you a target and they can't compete with the Broken Lords for sheer dust production. How the hell am I supposed to play them?

When moving a settler to a far away land (i.e. the second he leabes your borders), keep planting cities wherever at the end of the move and setseke immediately - that way, as you move you pick up a few apples and dust, while also keeping your little dude a bit safer.

Micro the gently caress out of your units! Hit and run tactics exploiting the charge bonus make your dudes move from poo poo to decent, while horse archers (that you should get asap) can outskirmish half the unit roster when used correctly. Just avoid proper tanks (like Sillics) early on and be very mindful of the terrain. We're talking Ardent Mages level of micro making a difference here.

Abuse your high speed to outsettle your opponents and scoop pearls. You have the best settler in the game and good units are meant to be built. It's especially important to grab prime real estate quickly, as it's tricky for you to conquer stuff without the ability to wardec.

Don't forget your early access to the market! It's easy to forget, but it lets you to start monument construction ages before the other races. Insider trading info is mostly useless most of the time, but if you're diligent about checking the market screen, it can warn you about an incoming military buildup or someone else also trying to buy into a monument.

Once you hit the Era III dust ramp, right of way the gently caress out of all those cities. And trade agreement everyone you can - it may require minor bribes for the AI, which is perfectly fine given your increased income. Also, it's a long con, but invest in your starting hero's factional (trade) skills. They're really bad pre-Era III (pre-trade), but the second you hit 4 levels and get the skill enabling trading with cold war/warring empires, just plop her in the capital and never stop laughing, as you begin lighting cigars with dust.

And yes, you will reach a point where you're swimming in money to the point where you drop a new city and insta-buy all the necessary infrastructure on the same turn.

Try to time market bans just before policy-setting turns - so that it's unfeasible to flush all that influence down the drain to counter your action. Peeps getting angry about the ban is not a bad thing - you either ban someone that's your major rival anyway or are glad for them declaring war for you.

Privateers kill cities, so they're nice for poo poo you want salted anyway. Also, given all their possible buffs, it's great (if costly) to just drop a squad of super saian haunts for the defensive meatgrinder when attacked.

Other that that, basically try to play them like Broken Lords that chose building pretty cities over a decent military. And don't be dismayed by somewhat substandard early game - once the trade and dust ramp kicks in properly, you'll have more dust and science than you'll know how to spend.

[edit] While Setseke, Ho! is 90% of the time used for relocating a new city once you spotted a waaay better location a turn earlier, it's also great if the defensive war is getting hopeless. If you're lucky, you can GTFO and settle some other place and if not - you'll have the opponent simply kill a settler, essentially destroying the city, rather than have any way of capturing it for his own purposes. Grow your own town, fuckers!

Roving Clan art of war is essentially a masterclass in passive aggression and scorched earth policy fits that perfectly.

Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Dec 29, 2017

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