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Old January 19, 2002, 15:50   #1
Velociryx
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Candle'Bre Strategy Thread!
Yep! Post your strategies here!

-=Vel=-
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Old January 19, 2002, 15:50   #2
Velociryx
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Early Strategy Essays on the Courts of Candle'Bre:

Notes on the Factions:
Fury: Prolly the easiest to play. Two leaders at the start give them LOTS of control over early battles and their cav bonuses make them REALLY powerful. Unfortunately, in a MP/hotseat game, that can sorta work against them too. Makes them targets, cos nobody wants to see them expanding too quickly. I see LOTS of archer heavy armies used to counter the power of the Furies, and lots of assassination attempts made ASAP to kill off their edge in leaders.

Castillar: Defense via Influence. These guys would be an easy choice for a peaceful builder. The potential for offence is there, cos they DO start with a leader, but their abilities lend themselves well to the acquisition of honor (stalling attacks on allies via their influence...which they could really have quite a lot of at game start if they opted for a temple on the open....one quick conquest of a neutral territory gives them six territories (2 Influence per turn), their leader nets them 2 Influence per turn naturally, and the starting temple gives them another. Every four turns, they have enough Influence to block an attack, and that's with only a single neutral province conquest!

The Seven: Sort of a swing faction. Most of their abilities are defensive. The rebellion thing, and loss of honor if you attack them means that they can mostly count on being able to control when a fight occurs, generally by starting it (since they suffer no penalties for being war mongers). And, their "convert captured troops" ability is heinously powerful (especially if they get their hands on "The Mercy of the Seven" card! A player faced with that has few options if The Seven launch a series of attacks along a broad front. Mass Retreats from battle will result in a hefty loss of honor, and in the meantime, every hit that they inflict before the retreat weakens the player they attacked and makes The Seven that much stronger. I see these guys as playing quietly for much of the game, and then just exploding out toward a selected enemy.

Mourngrym: My pick for the early game terror. Forget Barracks and just buy LOTS of Mercs (Hell, I'd even buy Mercs as my starting force with them). Yeah, you'll take attrition losses when fighting other players, but vs. the neutral territories, you have the ability to expand like nobody's business (since you're fighting all Infantry in neutral territories, and you can "bounty-up" the capabilities of your Mercs.). I see them as being played fast and furious....prolly not even worrying overmuch about combat techs at all, relying on speed and cheap mercs to put them in control of the biggest territory, and then using their economic muscle to plow through the Espionage techs to keep their opponents down. Their biggest threat, IMO, would be The Five, if that player chose Pestilence....since they'd likely have a larger than average standing army, they'd suffer much worse damage from the spell than anyone else.

The Five: Drawn to the dark side, like Mourngrym. With Divination, they can time their strikes against enemies to hit them when they're down and for maximum effect. With probability and "bountying up" the mercs., they can boost their effectiveness up to be even better than infantry, mitigatigating their losses by maximizing hits per turn, and with Pestilence, they can create "blocks" to prevent attacks against them (or at least make those attacks more costly, since any unit moving THRU a diseased territory has to roll a survival check. Of all the factions, I'd bill these guys as the hardest to play correctly, requiring more finnesse than Mourngrym's beatdown style, more active aggression than Castillar's burgeoning Influence, and more speed than The Seven (who would likely be the perfect choice for slow-paced builders and provincial optomizers). The only ones who could give them an early game problem would be the Furies, able to end-run around pestilence territories and still make strikes with their awesome cav.

****
Temple or Barracks on Turn 0:
This decision can make or break your game, and to answer the question, you must take into account who you're playing and what your goals are. Taking the Temple at game start is a natural choice for the Castillar family, because it plays into their inherent strengths (boosting their per turn Influence that much higher). Likewise, it *could be* a viable choice for Mourngrym, since he's got the cheap rate on Mercenaries and does not really need a barracks (design his starting force around regular troops (archers?) and bulk them up with mercenaries on the first turn. The Furies, on the other hand, NEED that barracks so they can start churning out Cav to make the most of their starting special ability. True, if the Fury player was planning a slower conquest game, they could take the temple, buy Mercs as their starting force and run with that for a while, but this blunts one of their chief advantages (awesome cav). The Seven....could go either way. They have no particular combat advantages, so it mostly depends on what strategy they have in mind. The fact that the Temple costs more than the barracks to build could weigh heavily on the initial decision, but it's entirely possible that the Seven player could run with an early conquest scheme and not worry much about Influence until a firmer base had been formed. The Five....well, Influence isn't really their thing anyway. True, the early temple could be used to offset their losses, but this is more along the lines of "covering a weakness" than exploiting a strenght. IMO, it'd be a weak start for them.

Starting Troop Configurations:
Ohhh, now that's a tough one! 100g doesn't go too far, so every decision is critical! Archers get a first tier attack, but are the weakest of the units. Infantry....cheaper, but you'll take losses more often than not when you invade your first neutral territory (assuming you launch an attack on turn one). Again, it mostly depends on your starting faction and your plan for the game. Mourngrym's choices at first LOOK like a no-brainer (buy nothing but cheap mercs and run with it), but if you forego a barracks for Mourngrym, you may want to consider Archers, with a plan to augment them with Mercs on turn one, attacking on turn two.
For the Furies....all cav would be nice, but that still only gives you four. True, you could bulk up with mercs/infantry on the first turn and have a nice force, but that will be largely dependant on exactly how close your enemies are. If Morngrym is within spitting distance, having so few troops on the opener could invite trouble.
So far, in my own testing, I've found that either two cav or two archers, backed up by Infantry is a solid way to go. Gives you coverage for your better troops, and generally sees you able to whack a nearby neutral territory, so long as you don't try to take on one that's too valuable (if you're near a 20g province, you can easily go in with that force and carry the province....don't try it on a 50g-60g province tho, you'll only set yourself back!
Leaders: Castillar and Fury have a HUGELY IMPORTANT early game advantage in the form of their leaders. Their ability to not only boost the attack value of friendly troops, but to "re-roll" misses gives a great amount of control over combat in the early game, when every unit counts. That the Fury player has two leaders to work with on the opener means that he can construct two decent forces early on, and expand in two directions with relative safety, not having to worry much about losses (some, it's true, but with the re-rolls and proper troop strength and army construction, your battles with the neutrals should last exactly one round!).

Army construction: Yeah, archers have a relatively wimpy attack rating, but don't underestimate them! The fact that they fire on the first tier means that if your enemy has archers and you don't, any hits suffered will be unanswerable hits! And, archers in quantity can WRECK your cav force before they even have a chance to strike with their charge ability. First strike ability is powerful. Underestimate it at your peril!
Cavalry: By every relevant measure in the game, Cav is the most deadly unit out there. When charging, they almost can't miss, and the damage can be devastating. But, if you're gonna use cavalry, then you NEED to balance it with Archers to cover your forces and do precision strikes against the other guy's archers. If you don't many, if not most of your cav will never live to see their charge through!
Infantry: The workhorse unit of the game. Build these guys in sufficient number and you can take the attrition losses and keep right on coming! They get more tech-based bonuses than any other troop class, and by the late game, become the troop type of choice, eclipsing both cav and archers....but of course, you gotta survive long enough to GET there!
Light Infantry: The good news, they can keep up with the cav, and so it makes possible a Light Inf/Cav, highly mobile attack force. The bad news, until you get a little higher on the military tech tree, these guys will be casualties waiting to happen! True, they CAN get lucky during the first round of combat and plink a few archers out of the way, but mostly, they soak up losses in the early game.
Late game...ohhh...but late game is a different story! Once you max out the military tech tree, you can be the terror of the map with a fistful of Light Infantry!
Pikes: Long on defense, but with a big disability. The good news is, a force of Pikes and Archers can REALLY mess up enemy archers (and a force of Pikes, Archers, AND Cav, and you can kiss your enemy's archers a fond farewell! They have to target your pikes, and you can set precision strikes with your archers and charges with your cav against their archers. It's a beautiful sight to go in with an army like that and watch them demolish a significantly larger force!....

The Mercenary Trap:
Using mercs is....like a drug habit. Once you start, it's harder and harder to stop. Yeah, they're cheap. You could spend your 100g designing a force of nothing but mercs and go a conquering early, BUT! To mitigate losses, you need to "bounty up" every attack (to increase their sucky chances of hitting) and that can get expensive! Once you start down that path, you can easily get addicted to the rapid growth and expansion. Trouble is, you keep doing it and keep doing it, and then, when you run out of neutral territory to conquer, you find yourself with an army of mercs, a lot of territory, and ZERO development! That makes you easy pickings for someone with a well put together army! (ask the guy that just got TRASHED in our last game!)

-=Vel=- (more later!)
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The list of published books grows. If you're curious to see what sort of stories I weave out, head to Amazon.com and do an author search for "Christopher Hartpence." Help support Candle'Bre, a game created by gamers FOR gamers. All proceeds from my published works go directly to the project.

Last edited by Velociryx; January 20, 2002 at 00:18.
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Old January 21, 2002, 13:20   #3
Velociryx
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Moving Day! Yep...we're officially moving the Candle'Bre stuff to my site, so as not to muck up the 'poly forums with all the threads we'll be needing, so! If you're curious to watch as things continue to develop, join us there!

The Renaissance Portal

(just click on the discussion forums link, and look for Candle'Bre!

-=Vel=-
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The list of published books grows. If you're curious to see what sort of stories I weave out, head to Amazon.com and do an author search for "Christopher Hartpence." Help support Candle'Bre, a game created by gamers FOR gamers. All proceeds from my published works go directly to the project.
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