Strategy and Tactics

Go fo warfare: logistics first. It's almost cheating, really.

I agree on the OP's post,indeed it would be nice with a dedicated forum room for these types of questions.

I'll third this request! Summon Strategy Forum!

Yeah, I've been picking up on the "go for logistics first" strategy. Seems like the best way to beef up your army so they don't fold when the first mob comes knocking.

I'm adding another strategy question to my original post as well.

What are the best ways to increase your gildars? I find the weapons/armor are expensive. Building stacks of soldiers are expensive. How do you get the money to cover these expenses?

I usually get logisitics and equipment first, then concentrate on the civ tree (for cash). Gold mines are very precious now as well. If you're playing a kingdom, I think if you research one of the adventure techs, more gold mines show up. I find that in the beginning I spread out my research until I get a bigger picture of the map and surroundings, then hone in on a certain research. For instance, if I find myself around alot of shards, I will devote alot of time into sorcery research to hopefully win with the spell of mastery. The environment really plays a role in how you should play each game.

In the later game, you can acquire tons of gildar by adventuring. A goodsized mob (level 5 or so) will typically net you anything from 100-500 gp.

all you need is warfare and logistics thats it, once you get just leather armor start pumping out huge things of spear men.  and summon creatures and then just roll over everyone.

theres very little in the way of tactcs except ina battle of trying always let your enemy get to you first so get first strike.

I go for easy kill

take the sovereing that get two sentinels at start, match it with Tarth kingdom, and roll over any city you find. 

Btw, sometimes they are escaping with a pioneer and drop a city anywhere outside the limit. In that situation I miss the option to raze it.

I want a RAZE CITY option.

You can still raze cities if you have the right warfare tech. Click on more on the city UI and then raze. Happy razing!

These are great thoughts. It appears there are some exploits on the warfare/logistics side that are taking the fun out a bit. Hopefully this will get touched up a bit. I'm adding another question as well. Perhaps I'll put everyone's answers into a strategy guide at some point, but it may be too early for that yet.

Where should I build my city? Should I only build near food resources? How would the city grow otherwise?

look here for a quick guide on how i do things:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/392788

1. What should I be researching first? The world has a ton of mobs and the AI can be aggressive. Should I always go for warfare first?

 I tend to go warfare for the first three techs - get logistics and then weapons up to ranged (until you get longbows). Design a unit with nothing but a longbow and train up parties of them, they're pretty effective in city defence against most early game opponents and they're cheap. I'll also tap the diplomacy tree as soon as I'm ready to build my second city to grab trade so I can set up a caravan route between them. The extra gold and food is nice, and the road lets you pull in defenders from your established city to assist if the new city is threatened.

2. Should I build every building in each city or should cities be specialized?

Specialise. The economy boost buildings only affect resources connected to the city, so you're wasting your time building a granary if the city has no attached farms. I find for best results specialise in either arcane research, tech research or gildar production to make full use of the level up bonuses, prioritise those buildings and then max out any farm or mines before worrying about another speciality.

3. How quickly should I be expanding? If it's a fast expansion, how do you defend so many cities?

Depends on the map. Remember that unlike civ or MoM, the natural income from a city is pathetic. Therefore only build cities where you can exploit some resource. Again, gold or research is my priority, but if I'm in need of some other resource like iron or crystals I'll found a city where it can only access those, though I won't grow it beyond level 2.

4. When is the right time to marry off one of your kids?

Personally I use them primarily for diplomatic boosts.

5. With weapons being so expensive, how do you boost the stats of your champions?

Adventure can bring in nice items, but particularly gold and XP. Also some research in the magic tree unlocks various magic items with stat enhancing properties, and the enchanted armour is ridiculously cheap and the best I've seen so far in the game.

6. What are the best ways to increase your gildars? I find the weapons/armor are expensive. Building stacks of soldiers are expensive. How do you get the money to cover these expenses?

Gold mines and specialised gold focused cities will bring in anywhere from 30 - 60 gildar per turn. Adventuring can also fill the coffers - once you can explore level 2 sites you'll get a lot of goodie huts which give you 200 gildar simply for walking over them.

Nice write-up tesb. That was helpful.

Make Human Female Adventurer + Brilliant-Organized-Tracker Sov with 13 wisdom and 15 str. I prefer fire, earth and ench books. Make a race with extra resources and starting bows.

Build your city next to farm, build first Study then farm and house. Your hero should buy +1 mov boots, cheapest club and go ninjaing all free stuff (you can also make some fun terramorfing with your earth spells). Don't forget to put research: Training-Civics-Specialization-Quests-Entertainment. Put spell research to Imbue champ. After researching Training make custom bowman with just only bow and start building expirienced one. When your population hit 10, just add pioneer and several peasants, you can cancel peasants after housing will finish to recieve extra pop.

When your sov hit level marry Janusk. By that time bowman should be complete, pick him up and go wreck chaos. Your main goal to build 1 pioneer and basic complex of buildings in your capital by time it reaches level 2, Entertainment should pop around that time, so put a pub in capital. Your second city probably will be lacking gold and/or tools, so build whatever resource you need there, then build all other level 1 buildings. You should move on reserch by that pattern: Trading-Recruiting-(some filler, I picked Fortification)-Channeling. Channeling should pop just around time you'll learn Imbue, so share some esence with Janusk and enjoy 10 + 1 from channeling on your sov. And yes, don't forget to build caravans after you research Trading.

By that time you (around turn 50 on normal), probably will be extremely short on tools, so research construction and build Mill in capital. Congrats, you just built your infrastructure and economical basis, move on war/adv branch and don't forget some civil research to invent prestije-gen buildings. Keep producing pioneers and bowmans, over time (depends on which diff you are playing, harder - faster) you can buy longbows for your sov and Kanusk and that will turn them into steamrolling machine 8]

Soz for grammar, privet from Russia.

Great post Archonsod. I'm looking forward to trying out some of these things next time I play.

We definitely need a forum dedicated solely to gameplay strategies and tactics.  Tips.  Advice.  Whatever you want to call it.

On a somewhat related note...is there a way to search these forums?  When I use the search function it redirects to...google.