FP Strategies

General
#1

Okay, so the game is balanced, in fact, the FP have the edge. So why do they lose 2/3+ games…??

Because, apparently, FP players don’t think “out of the box”. They combine their starting forces, pound at the gates, recruit massive amounts of follow up troops (HCav where possible) and pound a little more. They sell LE and FO and pick metals to flood the market with, buy TI and MO sometimes to 0 their reserves, ship product and gold to needy allies to recruit/buy more HCav and pound a little more.

In the event the DS don’t die/concede, the FP start to suffer from theft. They start to lose characters. Sometimes capital squats castrate entire nations. Of course, they suffer these injustices without 1/3 the mage power having secured, with luck, Elenruth and work feverishly to kill via curse/sickness one or another DS by turn 15. Of course, the huge agent advantage of the DS is augmented by RoW, RoC, likely RoI and the odd lost/Sinda (lost most game, no…?) Stealth Arty (see Capital Squat above).

Once the camp limit is hit Arthedain, Southern Gondor and the Noldo diligently work behind the scenes creating the odd village or town or even MTown in the event a needy ally (deserving one who doesn’t disagree often…) requires it. At which point, it’s likely too late as nations here or there have discovered that they can’t go far without dying, their armies are trashed by Dragons if they survive long enough to get there, and their capitals are no-go-zones.

One Last Cardolani HC st/st force comes barreling through the Gap, 14 backups and 5 guards later it makes it to New Morannon - a Blind Sorceror Town/Fort only to get Assassinated, Kidnapped, Cursed (or, if you’re playing Clink Weaked/Weaked/Weaked/Weaked/Sicked/Sicked to death) after losing the army to 400 LI and 3 dragons.

Fingers start pointing, people are quitting, Arthedain deny’s an MT to the Eothraim, SG’s newly named 20agent/10emis (stupidest character ever, check the Automatic Skill Orders folks and please stop doing this…! 10/20 bad too, but better than a 20/10…) fails to 949 (the order DOES fail, again, see Dice Theory at www.guaranteed.com/iwantmymoneyback/whineysuck.html) for the Northmen and the DS start posting on the forum again after a 3 month hiatus calling for a concession, which, when Noodle refuses to say Die starts the old bug-hunt-should-be-banned conversation up all over again.

#2

So how can the FP think “out of the box”…?

Burn misty camps. Actually name Agents and Emissaries, even with non “stealthy” nations. Use said Agents/Emissaries in an offsensive role. Kill dragons. Curse/Emis companies. Hidden pops in Mordor. Off map recruiting. Combine ops nation targetting. Strategic theft (not gold…). Blind challenges. Recruit help (dragons, woses, ents). Combined asset delivery (CAD, roughly translated into “build the damn bridge back whenever we want and pound through with war machines”). Etc.

What else? All very quick, off the top of my head as I await my auto-reply from meturn.com and highly general. Anything specific? Anything that’s apparently worked?

Cheers.

Brad

#3

I would say at game start concentrate like mad on locating all the agent & spirit arties, not just the neutral ones & the good ones but the evil ones as well. Have a well co-ordinated approach in collection the arties once they are found and make sure your side get them. If you don’t then use your mages to track them every turn, eventually the DS agents/mages will get unlucky and end up in a hex with your tracking agent/emmy company or one next to your own curse squad.

Combine agents & emmies of different races (once they become effective) in multi-nation squads, have someone on the team look at this. You’ll be surprised to find that the FP’s can have 4 or more agent squads up and running by turn 12 if they do this and just as many emmy squads.

Rob the DS doners blind, if the starting DS nations need money they usually get this from neutrals who join their cause, do this with agents who are not yet good enough to join a squad yet, you’ll be surprised how many neutrals don’t downgrade all the opposition nations once they declare.

Build strategic pop centres in those little hidden places from where you can launch surprise attacks to take out DS capitals. Make sure you have enough troops when launching such an attack, plan for the long term rather than the short term so don’t move your forces until you are ready.

Recruit the neutral nations, talk to them every turn. Especially try to get the Duns so you can secure the NW early on and they can be an extreemly effective agent nation.

These are just a few ideas, they have worked (G88) and will work again.

Cheers,
Ian

P.S. Brad you still in G13? I predict a FP win :slight_smile:

#4

And you can thank my early and unexpected demise for your FP predicted win in 13 if/when it comes to pass… :frowning:

#5

Among other occurences…

#6

I have no doubt many other issues have arisen this whole time, Steve, but I’ll take full responsibility for this one. Admirable job the DS have done, but the Quadruple Whammy they got in what was it, 5 turns?? Abominable it was, completely abominable…

Team Play is cited as a FP victory requirement…or lack thereof on the part of their “competant opposition”… No slag on Steve intended here. Those who know…know.

#7

I should also mention those 10/10/10 characters particularly with ones without com skill should be retired they are completely a waste of time to develope… one straight 30 agent or emmy is way more valueable… The only multiclass character that chould be considered is 10 com 20 agents… These guys cn become valueable if made early in game before turn 10 after turn 10 only straight 30+'s should be made…

Terry

#8

You can’t take credit for all of it, I distinctly remember giving a MT to a certain nation as it was annihilated, by surprise…

I’m surprised we’re still around, really.

But that is another game. I want to hear how FreePs are going to stem the tide. I don’t have enough experience to really add anything, myself.

#9

Terry,
I agree that 10/10/10 are a waste of $10k. However, there are times when Agent/Emmies are valuable. Notably for CL and/or NE (stealth bonus is pretty useless on pure emmie, but if you get one on a 20E10A, now we’re talking)… And once you’ve trained these puppies up to be e60+a60+, you plunk them in a company and you have got some serious flexibility, again especially if you got stealth on them. Probably can’t afford many as the press of events usually doesn’t allow it.

Also, in FA, because of the King/Queen and race rules, you end up with several starting chars now that are multiclass. I like having the 2nd class for a focused agent or emmie to be Mage. Since you’re designing the character, you can have the two spells that you get with the M20 be increased distance travel spells. Now you ahve an agent or emmie that can move 16. Now that’s cool…

Name the c10a20s if you want to ensure the enemy kills the army comm instead of kidnapping. That’s the real benefit - no long list of “kidnapped commanders” in CL backpacks…

but once the game starts, I can’t see ever naming a multiclass mage, or a comm/emmie. That said, I’m sure someone can come up with a special circumstance where it could make sense.

cheers,
Dave

#10

Anyone retiring a character should only do so after asking their teamates if they would want to have one of their characters challenged.

The FP have SOoooooo much money that this is a fast way to ramp up mages and agents to a useful level seeing as how they don’t even have to do anything but not refuse challenge.

#11

Game 13, thats the easterling vs. the free people game, right?

My opinon on FP problems comes from the lack of apparent early game enemy pressure, tempting nation-builders and character-developers to do that, instead of going to war with maximum effort. The DS then wins when their strenghts comes into play. How to counter this? every nation must go to war with maximum effort from turn 1, pressing the DS war machine on all fronts so they dont get a break, always keep the DS responding, never giving them the initiative - if the DS gets strategic initative they win due to the mobility of their assets.

When that is said there is also a diplomatic aspect, the offensive FP/defensive DS starting positions creates a tendency of early pro-DS neutral declarations vs later and maybe fewer FP declarations. It could be interesting to se statistics on how the neutrals go and how it influences victory.
Skage

#12

Dave

FA is completely different than 1650 FP… Com/emmy’s are extremely powerful 10com 40 emmy’s in FA are awesome… I personally dislike the agent/emmy combo but I do see it’s use in a group… I perfer them seperate becuase they low challenge rank … As me being someone who does persoblly challenge alot depending on circumstances, I woulded like to lose a 60 angent/emmy in one challenge. So I like them seperate with 215 on…

I believe nuetral joining in 1650/2950 can be huge momentum shifters depending on the nuetral players skill… But not so huge in FA… Mainly due the balance that cn be achieved in all aspects of the game by your setup… Often victory there has more to due with the luck of the region placements of your team…Each game of FA is so unique it’s hard to make any comparisons with prevous games.

Terry

#13

I think I must be the only one to use the 10/10/10 combo. I use them at recruiting sites to recruit and influ own. Very useful in my opinion when you are running a high tax rate. The 10A is so when agents come to kidnap you you can get away. It does take about 5 turns before you get more than a 0 to +1 loy bump but at least you are not getting -3 per turn.

John aka Defender of the 10/10/10 class :slight_smile:

#14

Multiclass with command rank at 10 (I’ve seen numerous people name 20-10’s or 20-o-10’s… silly…) is useful for Any other Class. C/A most popular, but C/E provide useful recruiting/520’ing, don’t discount sending these (or starting low-emis ranked coms…) to off-map camps to slowly build a little (cheap) army while boosting the loyalty for the better agents to swoop in and pop it up to a town/mt much faster than otherwise - off-map threatening army already supplied. C/M’s similarly not so bad to recruit/train, used as potential backups (likely get a Combat spell), palantir mages (say, MoveCompany and Palantir), etc. All characters if trained will be useful barring death/disaster.

#15

Only time I use Com/Mage is for Conjure nations myself - I’ve not got it to work effectively yet (too order intensive) but still working on it.

Clint (player)

#16

Conjure mages always want to keep getting better to conjure more mounts…so that’s 330 and 710. c/m = self-made HCav unlikely to ever work properly outside FA. Consider the c for back-field recruiting, and the M for sooo many other possible tasks…

#17

One strategy that I do not understand is to send people into the misty mountains later in the game to steal from DS camps etc. That’s a good way to get killed by dragons or enemy characters when there are usually safer places.

Plus, you never know when someone might spot you. :wink:

#18

Don’t send theives into the Misties, send a company that includes a Dragon Killer. Add a Scout agent and maybe an emissary or 2. If a Dragon is encountered, Killer challenges him, meanwhile Emis try to steal the camp away, the ScoChar advises if interesting DS characters are there. Otherwise, armies move on these camps. Mirkwood side has lots of Plains opportunities for fed cav (LC) to 860 from mountain-mountain. One would think there were enough DS pops to steal from they wouldn’t need to hit the Misty camps, no?

#19

Don’t forget the mage to heal the dragon killer :slight_smile:

#20

or pick up his artifact horde when they all fall to the ground as he gasps his last breath…