[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by wilphart

I suck too much to even consider multi-player. I organize a few powerful armies, take provinces, fortify with province defense & temples, and move on. I raid near fortified borders when I can't afford the PD, and I'll get aggressive when I see an enemy pretender or capital. But I can't seem to survive against the machine unless I heavily guard my borders and stick temples everywhere. Maybe I like bless strategies with capital troops too much. If I didn't always do that, I could make more quick reaction forces all over the map. But my poor strategy is for another thread.

So, Nieflheim's PD is bad, so dont build much. Ideally you build only 1 in any given province - so you get a report on the strength of any attacking enemy.

A few powerful armies is not the correct approach with Nieflheim. Each Niefl Jarl is an army in his own right - accompany with 3-4 Niefl Giants if you think you need the extra muscle. Expand quickly and just walk all over the AI. The AI will throw hordes of troops at your Jarls - which is remarkably ineffective once you throw some gear on them. You'll need to bring actual armies for cracking forts (boulder tossers are good for this).

In any case, if all province types should be equally distributed for a fair game, I can do my next map like that. I suppose I should make starting provinces with an equal amount of neighbors, too. I no-started the islands and dead ends, but with a little planning, I can do better than that.

As i said, i'd worry more about natural territory size than province type balance. Although ideally province types are well-distributed. But having some start areas that contain more provinces than other start areas before you reach chokes on all sides means either some nations will naturally get more territory after expansion than others, or some nations will start with less defensible borders than others (2 nations start inside a natural territory and are basically compelled to fight it out while another nation starts in its own natural territory and has relatively defensible borders with all its neighbors).

PS: what's the optimal water to land ratio for a MP game?

Either very little water (4-6 provinces), or some multiple of near 12-13 if you intend there to be water nations. Many MP games discourage water nations because there are balance issues. (Water nations are hard to attack for land nations, often have trouble being relevant because many of them have problems getting and staying out of the water).