Guide: Some basic notes on expansion

[Fantomen]

Expansion 101

This is for noobish newbies, don't expect to learn anything new unless you are one.

Some people have asked about expansion recently, so this is an effort to outline some general principles for successful expansion. Each nation will have different means to achieve the goals, but the goals and tactical baselines themselves are pretty generic. Expansion is the same in SP and MP, but I will assume that the goal is to play MP competitively.

What is the minimum required expansion rate?
This depends a bit on what your nation needs. Some nations need more provinces than others, and some are more dependant on getting early forts up, and some are more concerned with getting gems or blood slaves going fast. A general guideline is you need to get 12 - 16 provinces and 1- 3 forts under construction by late winter, which is turn 10.

That is assuming a game with 8+ players on a map with 13 - 20 provinces per player and normal settings. If the settings are different you will have to adjust your goals accordingly. Some nations or strategies may have different goals entirely.

Examples of national variation: Man wants many forts to lay a base for overtaxing, LA ulm wants blood slaves for counts as fast as possible but can deal with slow expansion, Caelum wants many provinces and gems, but can deal with relatively few forts because they are so mobile and cap centric, etc etc.

But they all want a minimum of 10 provinces and 1 new fort, that is the absolute baseline for most games. And you only go that low if there is important other goals to manage that warrants it.

Go the easy way first, kill all the weak indies and use the resources from them to build a more powerful squad to take the tought indies. Analyze which indies are weak in relation to your nation, it's not always the same, and go for those first. If your nation is resource heavy you can take the provs around your cap first to speed up recruitment, but if not then it is often better to move on, leaving the closest provs so that as many of your expansion parties as possible can take a province the turn they move out. Secure chokes and desired borders, then take the provinces left behind. Don't lose expansion parties, it's generally better to take a weak indie, stop and reinforce or combine two parties than fight a risky battle wher you might lose an entire expansion squad.

How do I beat the indies?
The indies are a number of varieties that may require different tactics. Some nations have sacreds or elite units that can beat all or most indie types, but some nations needs to build expansion squads tailored to each type of opposition, and some nations should avoid certain indies and expand around them to take them later.

Archer decoys i refer to is generally any troop with a decent shield placed in low numbers in front of other units to draw archer fire. This is a basic tactical element, even many powerful sacreds wants to have a few shielded units taking the arrows for them. Get used to using them most of the time. You can use indy infantry for it if you don't have any usable units in your national rooster.

Tribesmen
These come in a few varieties, but are quite similar. They are archers + weak melee units in large numbers backed by a nature mage. The mage will typically cast vine arrows while the melee units rudh forward and the archers fire closest.
Tribesmen are usually the easiest indie to beat, but sometimes they can swarm squads of heavy units in low numbers.
Killing tribesmen can be done in lots of ways, but a standard setup of a few shielded arrow catchers backed by lots of archers or just a squad of heavy units kills them easily. As will cavalry or flying high offense units. Awake SC gods or sacreds should have no problems with tribesmen. So there is a lot of leeway with this indie type.
Edit: Wolf tribe melee guys has dual daggers which can sometimes be a problem, protection is better than defense against low damage dual wielders, so think about that when choosing blockers for this one.

Infantry + archers
This is a very common indie. You can kill it with any squad of better quality. The general archer + arrow catcher works well because the AI doesn't know how to decoy. But you need a little stronger shielded frontline than against tribesmen, and punch enough to penetrate the heavy infantry protection. But generally this is an easy indie type to kill. Sacreds and SC gods should win 100% or they are just not good builds. Cavalry with lances is often a good choice too.

Barbarians
Barbarians hit hard, so they can kill a heavy or elite squad that lighter indies cannot touch. And they can also kill SC gods that don't have awe because their high attack and damage may cause afflictions and overcome the gods defences. But they have a glaring weakness in very low protection and morale and no shields. The trick to take barbarian provs without losses is to abuse these weaknesses. Either by using enough archers to rout them before they connect, use a god or units with awe, or get the first hit with fliers or cavalry or other high offense troop placed so it hits first. But archers is by far the cheapest and easiest, if you don't have them recruit some indie archers or tribesmen archers and kill them with that.

Horse Tribe Cavalries (Quoting Calahan)
These can be a little tricky sometimes due to the all-bowman line-up, meaning none of their troops come forward to engage your troops in melee. And if you go forwards to engage them in melee then you will find they are no pushover, due to high defence (of 16) and (in CBM) two attacks. But like a lot of Indys they are weak against projectiles, and have another glaring weakness in only having one unit with leadership, who will also be mixed into the bunch of troops shooting arrows at you. So it's not uncommon to beat these in just 2-3 turns if you manage to take out the leader with your own arrows and projectiles. (or damage him causing him to fail a morale check, forcing all the troops to flee).

Heavy Cavalry
This is one of the harder indies. The lance charge can often kill stuff that other indies can't, and archers don't work so well because the heavy cav connects and breaks your frontline and then kills your archers. You need some way to deal with that lance charge. This can be done in a number of ways, swarms of size 1 high defense units will tie up heavy cavalry. Flying squads on attack closest will stop the charge as well. A frontline with high enough HP to take a lance to the face, like a number of giants, will get to hit back and kill the cavalry, or you can just buy some cheap units to die for you with your real troops behind going in for the kill. Squads of roops with awe works well, but a single god with low awe isn't good enough. Astral blessed sacreds of any type can take a lance charge due to the twist fate effect. Basically you don't want the lance charge to kill valuable elite heavy units or sacreds, or to get first strike on your awake SC. Once the charge is negated you deal with the cavalry as any heavy troops, you need something that can punch through the armour. So some types of expansion squads simply shoudn't try to take heavy cav, but adding a little something to negate the lances is often enough for them to do it. You also need your squad to be big enough since the heavy cav is ofte backed by many regular troops and archers, so if you lack the numbers just wait and expand another way in the meanwhile.

Knights
Knights and longbowmen are probably the toughest indie. The same principles as heavy cav applies but you need more numbers and a good archer decoy.

Amazons
Amazons are a bit like heavy cav in that they often have lance cavalry. But they also have mages with some different spells. Here it is important to be careful with valuable units. But generally you just deal with them like with heavy cavalry.

Lizardmen
Those are a bit like the barbarians with their high offense and no shields. But you should never ever send a SC god against them because the shaman will invariably curse him. Send archers instead.

Woodsmen
Those are like tribesmen, weak archers. But with blowpipe troops that can paralyze and fatigue and therefore sometimes do well against a few elite units or a SC god. Archer decoy + mass archers is a good choice. Or just enough troops of almost any type.

Bloodhenge druids
These are really hard and can do lot's of damage. The mages will spam agony, a quite dangerous AOE spell, at your frontline. And the dark vines are terrifying monsters. Plus the blowpipes will fatigue the frontline from behind the vines. The trick to beating them is to combine a tough frontline that can take some agony (pun intended) and go toe to toe with the dark vines with something that can flank and kill the weaker troops and mages. An example would be giants flanked by cavalry. This is non trivial for some nations and they should wait with this indie, don't be dissapointed if your regular expansion squads can't take it. Lifeless units work well because they are immune to agony and blowpipes.

Elephants
These can be tricky to kill early if you can't make an elephant counter of some sort, they kill most any number of normal infantry with trample. Countering elephants can be done either by frontlining a few size 6 blockers, size 4 or 5 works in a pinch too but will be pushed around and take some damage. Ethereal units are ok as well, and anything with animal awe halts them full stop. Animal awe can be either a national troop or commander (Pan, beast trainer etc) or a commander given a rat tail whip. You can also rout elephants with critical mass of crossbows or other source of high damage ranged attack. They can also be dealt with using magic in a pinch, spells to hold them in place or single target damage spells or paralyze spam are examples of usable anti elephant magic, you have to look at what you can cast. Elephant provinces are often good targets for awake size 6 SC gods.

There is more to say of course, and lots of scripting tricks you can learn. And countless specific national expansion tactics. But following these general guidelines you should be able to exapand with most nations.

Please complement with your own wonderful insights.