Strategies

[cn1ght]

Thought I would try to get an overall strategy thread going.  The reason is that, at least for me, knowing how other people play gives me something to work with and I can then try to improve upon what they do or at least try to copy it haha.

Personally, it seems like the magic race has too much of a bottleneck around gold.  The other races all use gold+wood for their units, but magic simply uses gold so unless magic manage to get 2 piles of gold magic it seems like I just fall behind.  Just a sidenote, I actually played when this was Glest and LOVED the magic race, but either something changed or I simply did not realize enough of the game at the time haha.

The romans I just make a group of spear men with archers, and back them up with catapults.  Something I started doing recently and have not tried on many maps yet is to split up my forces into 2 groups.  The first group stays between my base and the AI then the 2nd group waits on the side until the battle has begun.  Once the AI's army has mostly amassed I bring that 2nd group to behind their army and destroy their range.  In addition, if I am versus magic I actually just charge the spear men towards their ranged anyway because their AOE demolishes their own units along with mine haha.

That's all I got haha, anyone feel like giving away their secrets?  It seems like most people just play versus the AI anyway so I doubt most people feel their secrets are much worth guarding anyway...

-cn1ght

[Omega]

Welcome to the Glest Boards, but sorry, I think someone may have beat you to the punch:
https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4822.msg35853#msg35853
https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=2273.msg10384#msg10384

And on the wiki:
https://docs.megaglest.org/Strategies

[cn1ght]

I did spend some time trying to find strategies in the forums previously and managed to find a single post dealing with beating the indians with tech.  But, there is such a lack of information about how to use the romans, or the indians, or the tech (besides "get a group of battlemachines", which itself leaves out HOW do you live long enough to get that group, how to you manage resources til then, etc).

I want sort of a walk through I guess as to how to do X, Y, and Z.  The tutorials help you know how to gather resources etc, but you need to figure out how much of each to gather, how many workers to assign for each resources, how many workers to build, when to build an additional main building which creates workers, when to start creating an army, when to create both workers and army side by side and when to cut off one or the other.  Things of that sort.

The wiki has some nice ideas about an overall plan, I like that and did not see it previously even though I did look in there for something.

Normally, when I am playing a game I love watching other people play first, then I copy what I saw as much as I can and go from there.  But, the multiplayer aspect of this game is lacking compared with what I am used to (means I get to be a trend-setter WAHOO!) and everything on youtube I managed to find were always of a giant army crushing the AI, never shows a good job of how they got to that point.

[Kiko]

The tutorials help you know how to gather resources etc, but you need to figure out how much of each to gather, how many ...

Hi cn1ght. I'm new to Glest and found strategies fascinating from the start. After a few quick 'everybody dead' games I started to work out what's best in the long run. After a couple of days I discovered that the best option is to spread carefully but boldly to take over new areas, amassing strength in numbers and taking over available resources. Once sufficient strength is gained, you can go in with a few teasers to test things out, or an all-out kill everything blitz. My games on a large map already run into 3 to 5 hours at times.

To start out I quickly check which resources are needed for different buildings. I switch on the tower auto-fire, and get a builder busy creating a barracks, and another creating a forge. Any others go for gold, and I then create some to go for wood. The balance of gold and wood depends upon what's required for buildings and upgrades, but my first upgrade is to enable faster production of fighters. This is a little different in the Eastern techs I love; Japanese and Ming.

The basics for me are; get the barracks and the forge done, speed up fighter production, then create a food supply, workers to get resources, and the crucial first fighters. I work out roughly where the first attack will come from then place some archers there, spread in a wide line and told to stay put. I then place a line of long pointy stick guys in front of them, and tell them to stay put. They both protect each other, and a few loose crazy guys added into the mix helps.

While gradually strengthening my defensive lines I add a couple of towers, more food, upgrade the weapons and shields, and then put up new buildings to get better weapons and fighters. When the fighters become more than enough for protection I send out a couple of scouts for resources and to spot loose skirmishers wandering around. Once I have a new area I like, I march some workers over there with a few fighters to guard them, start building a fresh town, and repeat the process. All rather obvious after a short while, but I play single-player only and it may help another newbie.

The Eastern mods are very cool, and Ming lets you train your peasants in kung-fu, which gives them a fighting chance of sorts. I'm looking into making them work on GAE due to it having a save game, and also allowing guarding, return to position, etc. We'll see how that pans out sometime down the line..!

[Mr War]

One Ming faction tactic is to amass a strong force of Hou Che (rocket carts) and musketeers, and separately a force of qi she shou (horse archers). Advance your main force to near the enemy base but out of sight of their outer defenses. Then attack with the horse archers from a flank. When they counter attack the horse archers in mass, start a retreating harassing defense using the horses speed and ranged attack to draw their force right across the map. Then attack their lightly defended bass with the main force and flatten buildings in a logical pattern killing towers, then castles and barracks etc.

[Kiko]

One Ming faction tactic is ...

Hehe; I've just taken a break from a long single-player Ming game, and am finding there's more to this mod than at first appears. I'm surprised and pleased to find that the way modders put everything together can make for a quite different feeling game, which requires varying of strategies and immersion in a different world. Glest really is very cool.

[Kiko]

I've updated the Japanese faction for GAE to include the Patrol and Guard commands, which alters the strategy somewhat. (I couldn't work out what was wrong yesterday, but realised these commands weren't included).

I'll do the same for the Ming Dynasty mod later.


Edit: I've created a new faction based upon Hagekura's Japanese mod, called Ninja Legends. Guess what that's all about...

I've stripped a lot out so it runs faster, has more of an 'out in the sticks' feel than town/city. There are fewer buildings, and they do different things such as storing resources, production, and upgrading.

It has great gameplay with choices of picking off units with Shinobi, mobbing Shinobi to take them out, etc. The strategy required is very different, and geared toward longer more interesting games. Ronin (swordsmen) are limited by the number of available Katanas, Archers by the number of Bows, and the deadly (but weakly armoured) Shinobi are very restricted in numbers.

No guns or cannons in this one – it's fantasy after all, and I guess set in olden days. When I've done some more testing to balance things out as near perfect as I can, I'll check on the licensing, add credits, etc., before uploading. If you like the Japanese mod but want longer more intricate games then you'll love this. (Built for GAE but should run fine on MG).