What are the pros and cons of retrofitting your first units to tier 1 iron armor before or after your first governor? FWIW right now I'm playing vaulters and usually use my starting hero as a general - I'd love to hear if different factions generally give a different answer to this question.

Governor is always better because you don't need much firepower in your era I army so you don't need these equipements to kill and securise the minor factions villages.



Unless you want to rush or defend very early.

I play Broken Lords and tend to do a tier 2 rush-- so to answer your question, I spend my dust on building buyouts in tier 1, and start retrofitting units in tier 2, and never buy any heroes beyond my starter.



Of late I've been playing tiny, fast maps against 2 AI, which avoids the late-game drag, and I find that my games never last long enough that governors would pay out anyways-- I feel that they need at least 40 normal speed turns to start showing any advantage over other things that you can do with your dust.



But part of this depends on how you're playing, and against whom. If you're not reaching tier 2 until turn 40 on normal, then you've really got to start worrying about dealing with aggression, not to mention minors, before you reach tier 2. If you, like me, like to rush science to tier 2, then you, like me, can get away with minimal tier 1 units, and sell them once you get a tier 2 army (built with industry, and taking advantage of the xp bonus that tier 2 brings).



On the odd occasion that I retrofit my tier 1 units, it's not with armor; it's with +move or +vision accessories. I consider my beginning units economic, not military, and ruins are a fantastic way to jumpstart an empire.

mek42 wrote:
What are the pros and cons of retrofitting your first units to tier 1 iron armor before or after your first governor? FWIW right now I'm playing vaulters and usually use my starting hero as a general - I'd love to hear if different factions generally give a different answer to this question.

Retrofitting or not is mainly dependant on faction played and minor/major faction locations.



1-. FACTION PLAYED: There are factions with good starting units (ex. Walkers), and factions with awfully bad ones (ex. Cultists). If you get some decent starting units, you may go agressive from scratch, and giving your units some extra punch and/or defense is nice to have.



2-. MINOR FACTION LOCATION: Once you start discovering minor factions arounfd your starting region, you'll see if they're not an issue or really hard hitters; It's not the same to start in a region with Sisters of Mercy (support, not much of an issue), or to start with Kazanjis or Geldirus (damaging heavy hitters). In the second case, you will have to get rid of them ASAP.



3-. MAJOR FACTION LOCATION: If you haoppen to find another IA faction soon enough, and you have a decent starting military unit, you may try to go for a quick faction elimination; that usually means quick retrofitting and switching production to military units, if you can cut their FIDSI gains with a quick siege you usually have the upper hand.



In any other case, you'll usually wait for Era 2/3 retrofits...

You would rarely need to retrofit your units early.

A notable exception is giving both units and your hero the movement trinket so that you can explore a bit faster.



Generally you should research Mercenary Market before your third settler and hope for some overpowered governors. Playing only on Serious and Impossible I can tell you that the only governors you should care about early are Necrophages with Food and Industry Boost and Wild Walkers with similar ones.

City growth takes a priority and you should always try to have water access in at least your third city, otherwise you will fall behind.

Once your cities have about 12-15 pop and all current buildings that are valid for them built, you'll be looking for a Broken Lords hero with Dust Efficiency 3, Boost is ok too, but you'll be putting all your pop on dust so Effc. is better (Glassteel Tome Tier 2 is also a must).



Once you have your coastal/lake/river dust factories set up, you can begin to rapidly build cities and buyout all of the buildings in them in 1-4 turns, making sure to put any heroes that need levels in them, because Buyout is tons of Exp. for governors.



Hope this information helps you.

Kriss6 wrote:


Generally you should research Mercenary Market before your third settler and hope for some overpowered governors. Playing only on Serious and Impossible I can tell you that the only governors you should care about early are Necrophages with Food and Industry Boost and Wild Walkers with similar ones.

This seems remarkably poor advice.



An Cultist governor (preferably with Industry Efficiency) is always useful, a Broken Lords governor (preferably with Dust Boost rather than Dust Efficiency) if you start in terrain with lots of dust hexes, or a Drakken governor (preferably with food boost) if you start with lots of rivers (though you'll want to replace this one later on with a superior governor like a cultist, so it is a temporary measure), will give Necrophage and Wild Walker governors a run for the money.



Just about the only governor types I won't purchase early are Ardent Mages, Roving Clans, and Vaulters - I find all the others situationally useful depending on my starting terrain. (With, admittedly, a preference for food and/or industry boosts, all else being equal).



Oh, right, and that's playing only on impossible, if it makes any difference.