Hi,



I've spent several hours lurking and researching other threads and haven't found anything that quite addresses my issues, so I figured it might be worth rolling the dice with a first post...



I just bought the game, have put several hours in (and several more researching strategy online...), and I am getting stuck in the same position every time. I am no stranger to Civ, Beyond Earth, and any other strategy/4x game of the last 15 years plus, but for some reason I keep getting stuck in an untenable position vis a vis roving armies in my lands. It's pretty embarrassing actually. I'm on my 4th or 5th restart and have yet to make it past 40 turns without being in a position that is so untenable I have to give up or spend the rest of the game limping along without real growth. Here are the details:



- Normal Difficulty

- Vaulters

- Hero is governor (but didn't seem to help much on battlefield anyway)

- My growth and expansion approaches get a little better every time, but everything seems to be on such a tight timetable that I can't afford to build much of an army.

- Vaulter marines get mauled by literally everything I encounter, owing to what appears to be abysmal initiative (I'm usually half dead before I ever get to attack)

- I usually explore heavily and parley, but that just seems to increase my chance of running into monsters or armies that will wreck my shiznit lickety split (Demons from a ruins once destroyed my army and laid siege to my only city within 20 turns of starting, nothing I could do to stop them)

- The resources required to fend off the 4+ armies marauding my lands pre turn 40 seem to require the diversion of all my industry towards unit production which I obviously can't do)

- Every victory is Pyrrhic, its basically an Army for Army trade if I can even win in the first place



Since I haven't seen any other topics on this, clearly I am missing something blindingly obvious, can someone help me? I am just not seeing how I am supposed to balance the massive defense requirements with effective growth and expansion. In my best game so far, I just made it to turn 40, I have 3 cities, no armies left, and 4 Roving bands of creatures all up in my grill that are just far and away better than anything I can field.

1) You can adjust the difficulty of roving armies + villages in the advanced options panel. If this is getting in the way of your enjoyment of the game, you might as well turn it down.



2) There's certainly a learning curve to rapid development. Eventually, you'll find yourself accomplishing in twenty turns what might have taken you forty previously. This subforum contains great threads on how to improve the speed with which you develop.



3) Villages normally don't start spawning roving armies until around turn 15+. That's a good time to start consolidating your forces. Stop exploring, call them back home, and consolidate them into a single, decent army.



4) Make sure that you retrofit your troops. It makes a large difference. Do you know how to do that?



5) Retreat from battles you're unlikely to win. There's a button in the battle initialization screen that allows you to retreat. It costs half the health of all units involved in the battle.



6) Roving armies don't usually travel far from their home villages. Prioritize dealing with villages in your home province. If you can't handle them militarily and can't meet their quest requirements, consider bribing them.



7) Eventually, you'll want to be able to field a full, competent army by at least turn 40 (on normal speed). You might not be able to do that yet, but consider it a goal. That's probably going to mean scaling back some economic development. Such an army should, at the very least, be able to pacify villages.



8) Some kinds of roving armies are worse than others. I imagine, as Vaulters, that you might be having a lot of trouble with Bos. Consider investing in some infantry or cavalry mercenaries or minor faction units.

Thanks! I do a lot of retreating, but I seem to get chased down inevitably. That being said, definitely some good things to take into consideration. I'm going to try and take a more measured approach next time around rather than racing hell for leather for exploration and expansion, taking into account the points you make above.

your battle strategy may also be a problem for you..



with poor initiative you have to predict what the enemies will do on their first turn and set your troops up to counter..

since you have 3 range marines you should move them to the back in setup.. the first turn of the battle the enemy will likely target your weakest damaged units.. so you can perhaps predict its path.. or lead him on a path that is generous for you (away from trees, the other side of impassable water)..



with each unit you select right click to the spot you want them to go.. you can then CTRL-rt click to target an enemy.. or it will shoot at anything within its range.. this at minimum gives you the first shot.. try to focus fire on one enemy unit to kill it with all your units until its dead instead of taking one shot each enemy.. dead enemies do no damage whereas an enemy with even 1 life remaining can still do max damage to one of your units.



the main point is dont just target the enemy and hope it works out.. use the tools like hold position when you dont want your unit to run forward..



save the game before a tricky battle then replay the battles with different strats to get more accustomed to what you can do.

Several ideas.



1-. As natev says. Roaming armies start spawning at turn 15+ or so, that is usually enough time to explore your surroundings safely (let's say, at least one region away from your starting position if you split, even more if you start somewhat "cornered") with your starting units. Knowing what kind of minor factions are around is extremely important.



2-. Not all minor factions are problematic, you can easily deal with most "support" factions (Sisters of Mercy, Ceratan...)and some others in a 1:1 battle with your base units, as long as they're not support (Cultists beware), but hard-hitting factions like Kazanjis or Tekites will become a threat if nearby.



- In case of support minor factions, your best bet is usually to round up your base units, retrofit them (they start with just body armor and weapon, you may want to equip them helmet and boots, and maybe change their weapon) and just destroy the village; you should not lose units (it may take more than one battle).



- In case of heavy hitting minor factions, you either have the choice of building an army fast (usually done when your base units are either decently damaging, ranged or you've actually planed to go for a military-based win) and overpower the enemy before the village poses a heavy threat (you will usually need a number advantage to deal with those villages with the exception of Necros if you happen to start in a region with Titanium of Glassteel - Necros start with Furnace researched - , you can build mine while rushing Advanced Weapons/Armor and retrofit your base units with Titanium/Glasstel... usually enough to deal with those hard-hitters), or you may rush Language Square and go for a fast Parley or bribe to pacify them (first try to Parley, if the "quest" is doable in time - "check ruins, battle the enemy there" - go for it; if is not doable in time - "gimme 10 glassteel and 10 emeralds" - then go for the bribe, it will be painful, but not as much as getting sieged on turn 20).



3-. All heroes are powerful in battle, even at lv1. They start fully T1 equipped (with the exception of accessories), give your army some bonuese (all heroes usually start with at least one army capacity) net you one extra target, and can usually stand a few hits if going sword/Xbow and board, or hit decently hard if going two-handed; plus, they tend to have decent initiative. In case of hard-hitting minor factions, assigning a hero to an army for just 5 turns may net you the edge you need. You will ensure some xp from the battle, the roam and maybe some ruins, so your main loss will be their governor Hero Capacity (if your hero started with one), and maybe one skill point already set into city upgrades (that depeding on the faction, may be painful or not, it's not the same "wasting" 5 turns worth of Aquatic Dust, than "wasting" 5 turns worth of Necrotic Agriculture or Renaissance Thinker)



4-. Be aware when retreating: Retreat deals 50% of MAXIMUM health. This means, two retreats on a single turn will kill an army (main way to deal with AI settlers, split your army in at least two, attack with one of them but UNCHECK reinforcements, settler will retreat, then attack with the other one). And if you retreat once, unless you have more movement points than the enemy, enemy will perma-chase till it gets rid of you. With the exception of DL's (that don't heal normally), you will need three turns worth of retreating to get a full health army killed (first turn you'll drop an army to 50%, second turn the army will recover some HP so you'll drop them to ~5% or so, and you'll finish them on the third turn)



5-. As Novalia said: Focus fire, deal with one unit as a time unless you want to take risks of leaving the finishing blow to AoE or something like that (for example, when using Zealots). This is the most important think in many TBS games (not all of them). In Endless Legend a 1/200hp unit hits as hard as a 200/200hp unit. Killing one of two enemy units means you just halved the enemy damage output.

Wow, thanks for the in depth responses. Some of the things I have already been doing, but a lot of that was really, really helpful, thank you!