Thanks for the tips!



The rush of settlers is so surprising to me, but it makes sense. I've found in other 4X games I am usually too slow at getting my first settler. I've fixed that in Endless Legend, but then it's founding a third city that I take my time with. Perhaps this is part of my issue.



I've had some successful games (up to "serious" difficulty), but I've found myself getting frustrated early game and just quitting most of the time. The biggest problem for me is the other factions wiping my armies in neutral territory. Their aggression seems so unnecessary, especially after they've commented on how much they like your peacefulness. I upgrade my units but it seems that no matter what faction I go with, my armies aren't strong enough until mid-game.



I'll put this strategy to use.

when you're playing ardent mages edit the equipment load out for your warlocks asap.. you dont have to retrofit at this point but the faction quest is going to grant you two units.. either warlocks or zealots.. if you set up the load out beforehand with some iron armor and an accessory that's what they'll be equipped with when they pop..



if you have an insane science start location (2 turn techs) it may benefit you to research language square (for faction quest) then ateshi zealots while you're building your founders memorial.. this way if you pop out a zealot from the faction quest 1. it will have iron armor for free and 2. it will be future retrofittable.. if you dont have the tech for zealots and you pop two of them from the faction quest on turn 4-5 you can never retrofit them in the future.

I've been questioning the wisdom of governors lately. Maybe it's that I choose tiles with less dust, maybe it's that I go military rapidly, but all of my dust gets sucked up into retrofitting units.



Earliest governors cost ~200 dust, but that's at a time when they're competing with cheap, tier 1 buildings which cost ~180 and give superior benefits. By the time heroes become practical (competing with tier 2 buildings), they cost 400 dust. And go up from there.



So consider a lvl 1 hero with dust boost 3 that costs 400. He doesn't even pay for himself for something on the order of 30 turns, and that's counting level ups. (He does provide military support to the district, which is occasionally helpful.)



Industry boost/efficiency is a bit nicer, as are heroes with industry+food (for those that eat), as is that science boost 3 Ardent Mage, although it's harder to do an apples-to-apples comparison. It's a case by case basis. Still, I think I'd need some spectacular luck to get worthwhile governors in all of my cities.



It's true that level ups keep the hero improving past that point, but 30 turns is a long time. It's not just that heroes are in competition with other buildings that payout more rapidly. It's entirely possible your game won't even last that long.



But I still find heroes useful-- just, more as military units. Heroes are strong military with costs comparable to units, requiring no army slot, and give army-wide boosts via their own capacities or those from accessories. When I run multiple armies, buying generals for each makes sense to me. If I anticipate peace for five turns, it's perfectly appropriate to assign these generals to cities.

natev wrote:
Earliest governors cost ~200 dust, but that's at a time when they're competing with cheap, tier 1 buildings which cost ~180 and give superior benefits. By the time heroes become practical (competing with tier 2 buildings), they cost 400 dust. And go up from there.

For me, governor heroes are basic. The only one governor that may not be that useful is your starting hero if he doesn't get a decent governor capacity (I recall last patch capped them at lv2) and has a not very useful T1 faction skill, bust most of the time you may pick your first governors from the market based on your needs/plans (since the game nets you a batch of 10 heroes to chose from, you'll usually find at least one that suits you)



If you shoot for a speciality governor, once you get your first Hero skill point you'll get almost the same amout of FIDSI as the corresponding Era1 building. For example, an Ardent Mages Hero will net you similar science just from 1 lv of Renaissance Thinker ( 8:science than the science granted by a public library (10+10% on city, that usually means the Library actually nets you 11/turn by itself). If you get your hero with some Science capacity (something very common, heroes tend to get capacities based on their faction, so mages and vaulters usually get science, DL's usually get dust, Necros usually get food...) you may get even more than the building; and even more as the hero levels up. And that hero just goes for 20 more, as you said. And actually, several faction capacities can prove very powerful even early on and through the entire game (for example, Necro's Slavery). While the longer the game goes, the more will take for the heroes to catch up, a hero that reaches decent levels may net you bonuses way more powerful than several buildings (specially heroes that net you percentage-based FIDSI, which usually rack up to +45% at lv3)



Still, NOT all heroes are suited as governors. Several of them just don't have decent Faction/Governor skills, or the skill come late in the game (so, unless you rush levels, you don't get much from them early on). For example, DL's Aquatic Dust is usually a T1 skill waste, only used to reach T3. Other heros, like Cultists, take a little to start rolling, and are highly dependand on the opulation:, but can become extremely powerful later on when the city grows.

natev wrote:
But I still find heroes useful-- just, more as military units. Heroes are strong military with costs comparable to units, requiring no army slot, and give army-wide boosts via their own capacities or those from accessories. When I run multiple armies, buying generals for each makes sense to me. If I anticipate peace for five turns, it's perfectly appropriate to assign these generals to cities.

I don't quite like this idea unless you plan for:



- A 5 turn pit-stop (retrofit that hero because you need to equip a quest item, or because he's been soo much time on the field that he's still running Steel T2 while you have recently researched Hyperium...)

- A "teleport", because you need to move that hero quickly to another location, so you can save several turns worth of movement.

- A massive buyout exp-boost (from a newly captured city).



Generals are just that... generals. Unless they have a pretty decent governor capacity (usually "XXX efficiency"), they just won't have governor skills learned (unless a single point has been taken here and there as a prerequisite) and thus they'll be utterly useless as governors. Heroes that have been playing warfare all the game will usually get more exp and levels (and GIVE exp and levels to their army) just by staying on the field shredding roaming armies and villages and searching ruins.

I'm planning an examination of building vs. governor thread, just started collecting data, so maybe keep your eyes peeled...

Yorien wrote:
Generals are just that... generals. Unless they have a pretty decent governor capacity (usually "XXX efficiency"), they just won't have governor skills learned (unless a single point has been taken here and there as a prerequisite) and thus they'll be utterly useless as governors. Heroes that have been playing warfare all the game will usually get more exp and levels (and GIVE exp and levels to their army) just by staying on the field shredding roaming armies and villages and searching ruins.

If you'll forgive me being a little technical for a second, there's a difference between "utterly useless" and "almost useless" Most heroes have capacities that buff both armies and cities, and, with an army intended to enter play via reserves, the army buffing learned skills don't matter very much (although brute levels sure do). Meanwhile, you've got your tomes, with the potential for zero marginal cost to switch depending on war-time accessories and tome choice. And by the time I've got two decent armies going, there aren't really any ruins or unpacified villages left in my own territory or in nearby, unsettled territory.

BlackW3 wrote:
On turn 20 you can execute your empire plan and then settle. It doesn't have to be a different turn, its only a matter of the order in which you do it. Same goes for luxury resources and strategic resources for the Vaulters.

There is one scenario where this timing fails. If you save the game and quit on turn 20... when you come back it will ask you to set the empire plan again which now includes the new city.. very frustrating.

Novalia wrote:
There is one scenario where this timing fails. If you save the game and quit on turn 20... when you come back it will ask you to set the empire plan again which now includes the new city.. very frustrating.

I understand this happens when you manually save? Strange, since a save should be just that... a save of the curent state of the game.



You should have an autosave at the start of Turn 20 (I recall game keeps saves of the last five turns by default), so in that case I guess it should be better to just use the autosave instead.

Yorien wrote:
Strange, since a save should be just that... a save of the curent state of the game.

I agree; it should be. But it isn't. Another point to add to the list, I guess.

Just wanted to say thanks for this thread. Helped me a lot with getting more comfortable with the game. Main mistakes I was doing, coming from Civ 5:



Focus population on food instead of production. Now I shuffle them around more freely, but with a focus on production until I have built everything I want.

Not assigning hero to city immediately. I'm not sure yet how important this is, but it seemed to help overall.

Also understanding some basic mechanics like the cost scaling of empire plans with city number, the use of luxuries (o.O) etc of course makes a big difference.



My first game on Newbie difficulty seemed too easy, so I stopped early. Moved to normal but I struggled there, loosing cities to roaming armies etc. Now with the help from this thread, I'm doing really well in an "Easy" game, so soon I should be able to move back to Normal and higher difficulties. Want to finish one first though.





One comment, also on the army splitting: One has to be very careful, in particular with squishy ranged units. Once or twice I lost units to armies of my neighbours very early, on neutral territory.

thundersteele wrote:
Just wanted to say thanks for this thread. Helped me a lot with getting more comfortable with the game. Main mistakes I was doing, coming from Civ 5:



Focus population on food instead of production. Now I shuffle them around more freely, but with a focus on production until I have built everything I want.

Not assigning hero to city immediately. I'm not sure yet how important this is, but it seemed to help overall.

Also understanding some basic mechanics like the cost scaling of empire plans with city number, the use of luxuries (o.O) etc of course makes a big difference.



My first game on Newbie difficulty seemed too easy, so I stopped early. Moved to normal but I struggled there, loosing cities to roaming armies etc. Now with the help from this thread, I'm doing really well in an "Easy" game, so soon I should be able to move back to Normal and higher difficulties. Want to finish one first though.





One comment, also on the army splitting: One has to be very careful, in particular with squishy ranged units. Once or twice I lost units to armies of my neighbours very early, on neutral territory.

About Hero assignement... I'd recommend you to check this thread where we're discussing just about that. Not all heroes become good governors, and there are some highly dependand on what capacities they start with.



/#/endless-legend/forum/9-tips-tricks/thread/3715-comparison-of-governors-and-buildings



And about units, you're pretty much safe until turn 15-20 (when minor factions start spawning roaming armies) as long as there are not mayor factions around; if there are AI mayor factions, you'll usually see the enemy hero drawing a beeline towards lonely units the same second the AI spots them, but if your base units are somewhat decent fighters, you can usually take that faction pretty fast (playing Necros, normal dificulty, normal sized map, found Roving Clans settling two regions away on two separate games... First time defeated them by turn 35 or so, the second one defeated them exactly at turn 26).



Still, since the latest patch (1.0.21), AI seems to be more aggresive while defending from sieges sending reinforcements from other cities if available, and the same turn their fortification drops to zero AI will force a battle, while on previous versions it usually stood there.

Well, after some time with other games, I returned to EL and finished some WW games...



WILD WALKERS:



Turns 1-4, As always. Split your base units and check your surroundings for a suitable settling location.



Where to Settle: Wild Walkers can have a powerful advantage early on, but it's heavily dependant on map generation. Faction trait Living Towns grant WW's +1 on any forest tiles in summer season, but it comes at the cost of slower movement in forests early on (until you research Highways), and the fact thay you may spawn in a non-forest region. If you happen to spawn near a big enough forest, settling on it, or in it's outskirts (to diminish or nullify the movement penalties) is a very good idea unless you happen to find a heavy FIDSI anomaly or some clustered ones. Forests will usually net +1/+3 for Walkers on summer, which makes WW's probably the fastest builders early on. Check mainly for and some tiles, with as secondary.



Turn 4-20 Once you settle, you have a though decission... setting your hero as governor or keeping him as a general. Check your hero capacities. WW heroes tend to start with either Industry Boost or Industry Efficiency capacities, that will add to a city generation as long as they are assigned as governors. A WW governor hero whith those capacities can "save" several turns when producing 1st Era units and buildings, at the cost of your starting army being squishier and slower early on, and "wasting" some initial skill points. If your hero doesn not have a capacity, is just best to keep him as general. Inf fact, WW's are one of the factions you usually want to keep a single, powerful army early on.



Hero Upgrades: Where to place points is heavily dependant on your choice of setting your hero as governor, or keeping him as general. First of all, Their hero Faction T1 skill is "somewhat useles". If set as governor, you'll usually chose Functional Insomniac, that drops hero assignment cooldown by -2/-2 turns. This is only useful iy want to keep moving your hero between your city and your army, so you "lose" less turns of Industry boost/efficiency, and the T2 Woodland Forager nets them +1 on tiles with forest, which again makes WW governors heavily dependant on map generation.



On the other side, Agile Mover (+1/+1 movement on army) is probably one of the most powerful T1 skills for generals. Coupled with the movement trinket, this allows WW's to scout extremely fast (two levels on Agile Mover and T1 movement trinket will net your basic hero army 7 movement, when default units for most factions usually start at 4 movement) while keeping a compact army to clear nearby threats. Agile Mover plus some extra equipment on your starting units is usually enough to clear most minor factions around (heavy hitters may still give you some problems) you early on, so you can almost usually prevent roaming armies from being spawned near your starting city with ease. Retrofitting your rangers is very important (armor them up, and probably change their X-Bow and shield for a bow so they pack more punch early on. Rangers have high initiative, so they'll usually strike first against most initial enemies anyways.



Tech Research: Your first research should usually be the Mill Foundry to further increase generation. Empire Mint is actually important if you settled in forests since you will have almost no dust gains, and retrofitting your base units is actually important (still, a couple of "lucky" ruin searches may net you the needed dust early on). Next I'd go straight for Furnace and Advanced Weapons, since a lucky Titanium/Glassteel mine on your initial region may upgrade your rangers from "painful" to "really scary". I'd forget a little about the Agate Shaman, barkskin is decent, but I usually find an extra Ranger to be much better.



On Era 2, developing Highways may further increase movement between your cities; coupled with The Sharing faction trait (you can see enemy unit locations - tile will be maked with a white exclamation ! mark - one region away) allows you to just let a garrison of units in a centric city, and move them swiftly where they're needed before enemies can even cross your borders. Next, getting Management Sciences may be useful, mainly for the Apprenticeship (+ on exploitations), but still a little subpar. Meritocratic Promotion to increase your army size to 6 (that's a lot of arrows...)



City upgrades: Most probably your first upgrade will be the Seed Storage (WW's start with storage researched) while you wait for the Foundry research to complete. Next should go the Foundry, and then you have the choices of either expand with a district (if in a forest, this may net you up to +9 extra:industry, start a settler... or get at least one more ranger for your army. Since you will usually scout with a single army, this allows you to just keep clean-sweeping minor factions, and if you get lucky you may snipe a lonely unit from a nearby major faction. Along with Necros, WW's have the highest chances to annihilate another faction early on if they spawn nearby and you happen to find them fast. If you find a lonely unit, or the enemy hero unit (most AI's seem to split their starting units, one scouting alone, the one being kept along with the hero) chances are... you snipe that unit and with some scouting you find their capital and lay siege to it (nullifying most FIDSI gains)before they get chances to reinforce; then just change your city production to extra rangers and sending them they moment they're complete; this usually forces a battle on your terms getting a free city and annihilating a faction unless they already expanded (my quickest annihilation is by turn 26).



Empire Planning: Depending on your base location, and since you tend to concentrate on and , you will probably end with 20-40:influence: by turn 20. If you didn't find another empire (in that case you can try to annihilate then, and thus you'll need the for war declaration) you will have to chose between the +20% or the :3 per opulation: working on dust gains. Science tends to be better most of the time.



Turns 21-40 Unless you're waging war or building an army to wage, chances are you'll be able to get a settler up and running several turns before 20. Holding that settler (even if already in position) may be interesting until you develop your plan. It will mainly depend if the planned location is extremely tasty on FIDSI gains or not (unless you get 40 by turn 20, something unlikely, settling two cities means you won't be able to enable any single plan), and, since WW's build fast, you may have problems to further enable plans - along with severe approval rating hits - if you expand too fast.

This is the best thread on the forum. How did it drop to page 5!? Back to page 1!



Thanks to the OP and others who comtributed. Let's add all the factions to this thread.

Yes, this thread really helped me get started and it should probably be a stick! Thanks to everyone that contributed, specially OP and Yorien.

I've been working on a guide for Broken Lords that is quite a bit different than how Yorien plays (and, in some ways, deviates from Antistone's recommendations as well). Three parts, starting here.

This is an excellent thread. I feel like a lot of this information belongs in a strategy section on the wiki.

The hero can be a remarkably safe scout on his lonesome-- slots for +vision items, and teleport home or to any other unit the instant something looks dangerous, and last stand means you can keep him at low health until you get free healing. And he's strong enough to handle, for instance, a temple desecration quest, which will usually mean some expensive healing if it happens to a stalwart.



I personally don't find any more than 2 pop on a BL city worthwhile until at least tier 2 (more likely, tier 3). That first pop runs 52 dust, which is a good deal for your dust, but then the third runs something like 2/3 of the cost of a tier 1 building buyout. 112 for 4 pips when I can buy library (~12 pips) for 178? No thanks. Plus, then I might want to build a settler from that city later on, and the pop was just wasted dust.

Anything Vaulter specific veterans can share? I had an easy victory on normal but on hard/endless mode I have been in an unending war with the draconians and the wood elves. I can hold my own but it's now turn 200 and the endless war has most likely killed any chance of winning a science victory. So want to learn why I was picked on by the AI? Just not having large enough army?

This will probably help me out a lot since my mind wants to use my Civ 5 early game strats which just causes me to fall behind.

Bump. Pure useful as a starting point.

Copperwire1632 wrote:
Bump. Pure useful as a starting point.

I guess no one will complain if I bump this useful thread.



I play the vanilla game, no Guardians etc. and my comments are based on my experience with Endless difficulty single player.



So far I have understood that a strong goal for the first Empire plan, for T20 on Normal speed, is to achieve Era II and unlock Tier 2 Empire Plan off of one city (It's possible off of two cities with some seriously overpowered starts, but let's not consider extremes).



Often when it is possible to enter Tier 2 before T20, it may also be possible to have a settler ready on T20 (just built from production overflow, no growth stagnation).



Some factions have a much easier time getting this goal accomplished, for instance Wild Walkers can achieve it with almost any start due to insanely good starting techs.



Happiness thresholds are a huge thing in the beginning (+15% from Happy brings in more than a founder's memorial) and Sewers can get you to fervent if you have settled happy resource or stumbled upon some luxury (+30% from Fervent is about 3 founder's memorials).



My question is, what would be the alternative to playing for Tier 2 Empire Plan in the early game? I haven't found an opening that has similar strength. Is settling pre- Empire Plan viable at all on Endless difficulty?