Now it is time to build the first city… and my decision is I left the 3/3/3 tile for now for second city, and I will build my first city on 2/4/0 tile next to the forest, here.

Notice unless my faction has ‘master scout’ trait, trees and hard terrain will halve the movement of the unit. It means my queen only moves 1 tile per turn when move across the forest. River will force the unit to completely use all movements left to pass over unless master scout trait is available.

Before I do anything, I need to set what to research and tax rate.

In research screen, I will choose restoration in Civic tree, which allows me to build workshop that gives production power, and garden for more food. This should be very first research subject for all games.

And I set the tax rate to low. You can choose none but there is few difference between none and low in terms of unrest penalty. In case you don’t know what is unrest penalty, it is like unhappiness/corruption in Civilization games for cities.

Finally, time to hit the Turn button for the next turn.

Now finally a second turn, I move my queen to right side and hit the ‘settle’ button on the bottomleft of the screen.

The name of city is automatically created, and you see this new city is surrounded by some kind of halo ring of the color of the faction. This ring indicates influence zone, and it is counted as friendly zone…. Well not really friendly unless I get rid of monsters nearby.

So I click this city thing… and it gives build (build buildings), train (troops and stuffs) detail and rename. Well, actually there is more. You see there is a small button on right side of rename button? Yeah, UI is hiding more buttons. Now I see a Raze button, which will instantly destroy the city, which I am not going to do it.

On the left side of the screen, there are some rectangles with pictures, this side will show available unit stacks and cities, and activated quests. You see ‘zzz’ in next to my first city, which means it is doing nothing. Doing nothing is bad, so I clicked build button. So what I have…

Logging camp : MOAR production => Yes please.

Merchant : MOAR money => important later in game, but not in early game.

Monument : increases influence zone by 1 => situational, if there is a resource tile close, I might want to increase influence zone to build something there, but I don’t see anything interesting here…. wait I do. How could I forgot that earth magic shard and crystals next to butchermen? but blah… those resource tiles are not really benefits for very early game, so I will skip this.

Scrying pool : a unique building available for my race only. This will gives 1 extra chantment socket for the city. Since the tile I built my first city was 2/4/0, there is a no socket available at the moment. Yeah, I am going to build this soon.

Tower of Dominion : this thing will gives 1 growth (which increases population) each turn, and instanly gives 10 fame, enough to trigger hero recruitment event that happens certain number of fame. It also negates the unrest penalty (unhappiness/corruption in Civ series) from having more cities… but it almost does not matter when it becomes matter. But I will build this since +1 growth each turn is huge thing.

Doh, so something I forgot to tell you… go to option menu and deselect Auto-turn and Auto-select next unit if it is selected. And select auto-station new units for our own sanity. Also it is very good to Tact-Battle Animation Speed to 2x otherwise default is too slow and 4x is too fast.

Now, go do Advanced option and make sure select Skip Intro Cutscene and enable Manual Improvement placement. Yes will solve a lot of hassles, now back to game. If it asks that the game needs to be restart, go save and restart, and load the game.

Sigh, back to city building, I will first build Logging camp since production is king, and it will allow stuffs to be build faster. Notice logging camp can be only built on tile that has forest in it. And then I will build Scrying pool for the enchantment socket, and finally a tower of dominion for the city population growth.

Remind ourselves that the grain tile of the city was 2, the total food reserve of the city is probably 50. I can check it by clicking detail button, here it is….

Yeah, first city’s initial population is 30, and with 50 food available, there is only 20 food left. Sure it will be able to go up level 2 city, but then it will be food locked and no more growth unless I build garden. I am researching restoration for both workshop and garden indeed.

Just in case city is being attacked, even if there is zero troops in there, there are always some city troops automatically available, and you see from centerleft of the screen, there is a small circle, and it is indeed a city militia that will automatically popup in case monsters or enemy troops come in. The catch is they are so weak that they cannot even beat some wolves by themselves.

Now back to the world map, I see my queen is right next to warg, and it can trigger warg to attack the queen during the turn phase. With just 2 attack power, no amour, and 22 hp, this girl is no match against 2 wargs. They probably won’t attack but it is not certain. Unfortunately the queen has no movement point left to move away.

I was able to bring back one with clubs to the queen, but not the better armoured, spearmen. Well, then it is the time to use summon, one of the good stuffs for the early game. I clicked spells button on the bottomright of the screen.

There are some more stuffs if I use mouse scroll up and down, but right now I can’t use any of city enchantment spells because my first city currently does not have any enchantment sockets. I will explain these later, so let’s click this Summon Shadow Warg from Summon section….

Now, the range says it is ‘self’. It means this warg will show up in the army stack of the summoner (which will be the queen for current case) and it will consume 1 mana per turn along with initial 30 mana requirement. Ok I got it all, now summoning…

Hmm, well, he is good and he is certainly can fight toe to toe against one timber warg, with help of rest of the troops, I can hopefully defeat all two of them.

I have exhausted all of the moves so I click turn button…. and fortunately, warg did not attack the troops. I will bring that spearmen so I can fight warg with the best strength available to me.

But before I fight, I’d like to grab that goodie right below the units. So I move the unit stack there…

...and burning axe is far better than this shitty 4 damage staff, so I click equip. My queen’s damage when up to 9 from 2, which is a huge improvement, and being axe, my queen now has ability to attack one more time if the first attack misses. The downside is it gives -2 initiative, which means my queen will be able to act less, but it is far better to hit 9 damage once a while than desperately trying to attack with 2 damage.

I moved my spearmen to the main stack, and despite the bigger stack had 1 movement left, with spearmen joined with 0 movement, it made the whole unit stack’s movement zero, I will pass the turn again to act against wolves.

4th turn, logging camp is finished on my first city, and I already see production has increased to 30. Buildings are now being built faster than before. Now with my main army stack selected, I right click those wargs….

No, do not click auto-resolves. You can do it later to save time, or some specific case that auto-resolve may turn better than battle manually, but please, auto-resolve will make you lose troops and it is bad. We will go to the battle.

So, the one with the highest initiative, my shadow warg summoned by my queen, takes very first action. If you see left side, you can see which unit will take next action. Since my human troops are as slow as snail both warg will take the action. I move my mouse cursor to the one of the warg, and it shows the movement range of the unit, which is…. huge. If I charge my shadow warg alone to them, it will end up my warg will get killed by those two attacking my shadow warg. So what I do is I put my warg back, and I will try utilize my human troops as cannon fodders.

I moved my warg next to my queen, and clicked ‘pass’.

Computer AI just barely moved the wargs. The distance is wide enough to not my human troops to get closer to get first attack, but close enough to wargs to attack my troops first. Oh well, as I said, at current state, my troops, especially the ‘militia’ troops with clubs, are literally cannon fodders so I don’t mind getting hit first.

Now, for human troops, there is a silly ability called soul spark. Do not use it. It uses too much mana for too little damage, completely worthless unless in very, very desperate situation that you must absolutely win the fight. I moved my troops closer to wargs and click pass. Notice I will move my queen behind of my troops. It is because if my queen dies from the battle. If I win the battle, my queen won’t get experience to level up, making the battle nearly pointless.

The queen has far better abilities (from her air and water magic) called haste (make units act faster) and slow (make units act slower) but at current state, mana is too important and I can win battle without using them. I want to save mana in general.

Now, what AI usually do is they try to take out easiest to die troops or ones with doing decent damage and stat. In that case, it would had been my spearmen. But thankfully, the obstacle disallow the other warg to attack the spearmen, so it instead attacked militia. Notice, while attack damage is kinda randomized, you can see the effect of having armor or not. Militia has received far more damage than spearmen. Now I attack the warg next to the spearmen… and when spearmen attacks, you can see militia, while not in action, does attack the warg as well. This is called swarm mechanics; more your units surrounds the target, more damage bonus. It means even if each individual units are weak, they can be very dangerous if they surround my stronger but fewer troops. With spearmen attack and my queen’s axe….

I killed one warg. Another left. I move my shadow warg to attack…

so, when my shadow warg attacked the timber warg, the timber warg retaliated and attacked my shadow warg because it has counter attack ability. Then that timber warg kept attacked my milita unit, make its hp really low. As you see, the number of the people in that unit are actually decreased. They were three before, now it is only 1. It is not just a graphical effect. With two people die out of three, I also lost 12 attack damage from 18 total available. only can do 6 damage with just one man. Now I finish the warg….

My queen has leveled up from the battle, and for winning the battle, I got some warg pelt which can be sold back for some money. My troops, especially militia unit, has heavily damaged and lost a lot of hps. Yes, they will regenerate as turn passes, even faster if stationed in a city, but it is very slow. But I will be able to solve that problem when my queen levels up to 3. For now, I have to choose her profession.

And obviously as summoner, her best profession is mage, but commander is not bad and quite strong profession. For the sake of the playthrough, I will choose mage.

With one move left, I move my troops to now cleared warg lair (otherwise they will respawn wandering stuffs, or respawn the whole main stack if it gets upgraded) and it will completely eliminate the lair with a loot to take.

In this case, instead of a item, I got a 8 golds, which is… rather not good since even really bad items gives more than 8 golds.

Phew, longest 4 turns I’ve playered ever. It took forever to write this...

Thank you. Not that really high bar tho, since this is really for the beginners. I hope as I explain all of the basics I won't have to explain that much later in the game.

Maybe you are right, but it seems the unit is always healed faster in a city than in the wild regardless of the type of the city or improvements.

And I am sure healing bonus from the healer trait stacks.

Great stuff, keep up the good work! 

Good effort trying to make a playthrough that can help ease people into the game.

Some other considerations for beginners reading the comments that they might want to consider for their own games:

1) If you move the militia 2 spaces and the spearman 1 space (or vice versa) before moving the hero, the hero can make a city anywhere at a distance of 2 on turn 1, because one of your units still has movement left and that will prevent auto-turn from engaging.  Then you can use the 2nd movement of the original unit after the city has been created.  Proceeding this way is almost guaranteed to result in better outcomes for those people who like to leave auto-turn on.

2) The 3/3/1 tile still looks to be within a distance of 1 from a forest tile.  If you are in the game it is pretty easy to measure this, but I am just guessing from the screenshots.  If so, a city built there can still make the lumber mill.  Maybe it can't make it on turn 1 if the wood is diagonal to the home city, but it will be enabled for later building when you can put it in a forest tile.  Also note that it doesn't have to be in the forest tile next to the city.  For those who turn on manual building placement, they can "snake" the lumber mill and have it be far from the wood that enabled its construction.

2a) I would rate the 3/3/1 as higher than a generic 2/4/0 tile, especially for Procipinee who has 3 different kinds of magic.  The more types of magic your heroes can cast, the more valuable essence slots are and Procipinee can cast more types and more of the best types than any other sovereign can.  Also note that many city enchantments have per essence bonuses, so 2 enchantments with 2 bonus each is 4x better than 1 enchantment with 1 bonus.

2b) If the 3/3/1 were chosen, Procipinee could cast an enchantment on the city that would give it +1 research per turn.  In the beginning of the game, that amounts to doubling research speed which allows researching the key early techs in half the time.

2c) The difference between 3 hammers and 4 hammers of production is pretty substantial (4 will get things done 33% more quickly than 3), but it is possible to use enchantments that increase city production if you have earth magic.  Procipinee doesn't, but it is fairly likely an early hero will.  That would enable the 3/3/1 to act as a 3/4/1 city which would be far superior to the 2/4/0 city.

3) I usually take Civics research first to get Bell Towers more quickly and then get Restoration second.  Knowledge can also be good, because it allows you to build a Study earlier.  This doubles your research speed if you aren't using Inspiration or adds 50% if you are.  Compare a production increase of about 16% vs a research increase of 100% or 50%.  Ultimately production is going to be the bigger bottleneck than research will be over the long term, but in the beginning I like to get the biggest impact improvements first and 100% > 16%.  Restoration also takes longer than either Civics or Knowledge to complete and generally speaking the more research that is completed faster the better.

4) With manual building placement, I wouldn't suggest queueing up 3 buildings at once.  Manually placing buildings can be hugely advantageous, but only if you place them well.  Generally speaking, placing them well means connecting the newest one to the one placed immediately before.  You can't do that until the previous one is completely constructed.  

4a) Looking at the pictures, the one placed up and to the right of the city is excellently placed.  The other two are uselessly placed.  One of them by necessity must be placed poorly, because the lumber mill has to be put on a forest tile and the lumber mill is being constructed first in this playthrough.  The other, however, should definitely be placed farther up and to the right when the one already in that direction is finished with construction.

4b) The best use of manual building placement is to enable your city guards to guard your resources.  In this case there is only 1 nearby resource, so the player won't run out of buildings before connecting all of the resources to the main city.  In other cases, though, you will run into instances where you want to connect more resources and you will sometimes need every available building to accomplish that.  The poorly placed building won't hurt the player in this play through most likely, but the difference does matter.

4c) If you are going to play a custom sovereign, give extra consideration to picks like Enchanters and Legacy of Serrane that grant buildings as part of their benefits.  If you are using manual building placement, it helps to have all the buildings you can get.  Make sure the choices reflect your strategy, but keep in mind 1 more building can make the difference sometimes in whether a resource is guarded by your city defenders or if it isn't.  This is made more important by the fact that the AI absolutely loves to target unconnected resources during wars and often wildland enemies target them as well if they are wandering.  If the enemy steps on one of those you can lose many turns worth of production to build it again.

For goodness' sake, turn auto-turn off! If you are even vaguely serious about strategy games ending the turn automatically before you've checked that you've done everything you want to is just never a good idea.

Good thread though.

Turn 5~??

So, I made two mistakes.

1.) It turns out I did not save properly, so I lost the progress for warg battle, I did it again, and instead of militia folks, spearmen got hurt really bad.

2.) As you see, when I found the first city, all of the city-able tiles are gone… because there is a limit for how close cities can be built. I thought I would had enough space for 3/3/3 tile… but it’s gone and I only have 4/3/2, doh. It’s fine, not a big deal.

In order to have a time to heal my spearmen, I decided to pick up some goodies while exploring east area more. I picked up a round shield, but I cannot use it because my queen’s axe is dual-hand weapon. Another is quite good one called wellspring magic scroll which will allow me to heal the troops in the tactical battle (magic scroll will be consumed in the process.)

Keep exploring further , grabbed another goodie (solder’s glove) and I see there is a bandit archer’s army. It is very slightly easier to kill than darkling shamans. I will keep moving close around them to pick up the goodies and activate the quest.

Well, I noticed scrying pool is complete. Time to enchant my city.

Inspiration is the best choice, since it will be a while to have conclave for researching, and growth is not really pressed matter. My first city will be a fortress and it will be used to make pioneers and stuffs, thus it won’t grow fast anyway so I did not use Sovereign’s Call, which accelerate growth of the city until food runs out.

Now, It is time to look at resource bar at the top of the screen. Notice my gold…. I mean gildar in this game’s term, it’s in red. Move my mouse cursor over there, and I found I am losing money, bit by bit. BUT, it is not really a concern unless I go negative and start losing trained troops because I am in debt. You will see why very soon.

Thanks to inspiration, my research speed is doubled. It’s incredible speed boost

Fame normally does not generate per turn until I get specific improvements. For now I will get fame by completing quest and build some buildings that instantly give fixed amount of the fame for once.

Now I click mana and… wow? I summoned the shadow warg and it should consume 1 mana per turn, but it is… well, somewhat bugged and it consumes 0 mana, what the heck is going on…

ANYWAY, when I hit the next turn, finally someone decided to attack me. And of course, the stronger stack, shaman army decided to attack me.

As you see, the map is large, and darklings movement, unlike wargs, are quite limited. It means I can charge my shadow warg sideways carefully so It can pick off one unit one by one without being swarmed by rest of them.

Now, I did a bit gamble here and decided to use rush ability on warg to move once more. Remember this warg will lose 1 turn after this.

Shaman used blindness on warg (which would decrease accuracy of the attack of the warg) but warg resisted the spell and it failed.

Alas, I used slow on Shaman when queen is on act, but the shaman resisted and the spell failed as well. Darkling tried to attack the warg but the warg also dodged the attack as well. Notice the movement of the darklings; they are eventually swarming both damaged spearmen and the warg.

Now the shaman summoned a reinforcement. Tip is, if the summoner dies in the tactical battle, the summoned stuffs instantly disappear. There is no need to fight summoned creature/reinforcements if you can kill the summoner as quickly as possible.

I tried to use slow on shaman again with my queen, and the spell is successful. It decreased shaman’s initiative from 24 to 21 Notice due to losing one turn, my warg is surrounded.

I decided to back off my warg a little bit and decided to attack the darklings that is next to my queen. Thanks to swarm bonus, the darkling dies one hit.

Now, notice another darkling unit that has small white-ish armor icon on the top of their heads… It’s called defensive position, and it is automatically active if the unit is not next to any enemies, and did nothing but move. It will give +5 extra armor, and this mechanism is introduced to reduce “first hit to win” problem.

Very lucky, my milita men did ‘bash’ on the enemy, doing bonus damage and stunned the enemies. All club-type weapon has chance to bash the enemy and active ability for being able to do twice damage attack while losing one turn. So far so good. Now I ordered my warg to finish off that damaged darlking.

Notice I left that summoned darkling, because he will banish as soon as the shaman, summoner dies.

Queen attacks the darkling troops with was on defensive position, doing less damage (5) and I decided to just kill of that summoned darkling anyway.

I moved my milita men to kill the darkling army stack.

Now shaman used this infamous shadowbolt, nearly killed my spearmen. It is crucial to important to make the troops alive. Even if they are heavily damaged, they can always heal themselves for free. But if they die, you have to train them again. Also notice the darkling shaman also used shrink on the spearmen, making them small, thus doing much less damage while gaining some dodges for being small.

I moved my queen and warg to finish off the shaman, and used militia men to kill of the last darkling. My queen got another level.

As a mage, my queen has two separate tab for traits. One is ‘General’ that everyone has it plus magic schools available if the champion has it. Other is Mage because I chose her as mage when asked for the profession. This will be different by different heroes.

Now, the very first trait as level 3 champion is ‘healer’ I will heal the unit 3 hp per turn. While it seems it is not that much, because it is applied for individuals in the unit, it is quite powerful.

For instance, if a unit has three individuals the total possible healing is actually 3x3 = 9 hps per turn, it’s huge.

Now, I am keep picking up the goodies. In order to avoid to position my army next to the butchermen, I will pick up that goodie next to butchermen first, then I move back to grab the one near archer army.

Tear of cyndrum allows my queen to heal herself by 3 when she kills a enemy, equipped.

Now blessed hammer… It does extra damage to undead (notice bonus is NOT applied to ‘dead’. It means it won’t work against dead faction) This will be handly against butchermen, but I notice I will lose another 2 more initiative, since it says -4 initiative against axe’s -2. Oh well, but thing is, the hammer is one-hand weapon opposed to axe’s dual hand; I will be able to equip the round shield since one of her hands will be free. So I decided to equip the hammer and the shield.

My god, forgot she had zero armor, now she has 4 from the shield. A big difference for survival. Notice the shield also gives some dodge chance too.

No resting, now the archer army attacks. With spearmen not healed, my unit will die in this battle because there is no way to stop that archer from attacking the spearmen.

Then now I remember I have a wellspring scroll. I used it and it healed everyone to near full hp.

Some throwing knifes from bandits (it is actually negative habit for some situation, since it does less damage than normal attack) but all units successfully dodged them. Now I am trying to get close to the archer using the warg to kill him first.

My warg kept missing his attacks and my queen is surrounded. Good thing my queen killed one of the enemies, getting 3 hp back, and my milita did bash again (my god, like for weak units like militia, I don’t see them doing bashing this often…)

Warg finally landed the attack killing the archer and I finished small critters attacking the queen.

Now it’s them surrounded.

Very good result.

Now I am ready to face butchermen with healed troops and blessed hammer, but before that I’d like to grab that quest as well, while getting goodie too.

By clearing another monster lair, now my fame reached 3 and getting a hero….

...and they are really bad. Oh yes, they are level 1 hero, give the most flexible, but I just do not like them. I chose right side hero since altar blood is much better than tarth blood.

Now, because of this idiotic experience split mechanism, you do not put more than 1 hero per army stack unless it is absolutely needed. For now (and probably the rest of the game), he will be used as a scout. Good thing is unlike a trained scout unit, as a champion, he can pick up the goodies and activate the quest locations as well, quite effective scouting. He will be moving to the west. Now I am finally activating this quest location….

Oh, this is good. Butchermen-related quest next to butchermen lair, quite fitting.

Yes of course I will gather the flower, while my scout will try to pick up that goodies shown on the west side.

But before that I’d like to clear butchmen lair first.

It’s very good thing that my warg got the first move, otherwise butchermen would simply focus him, killing the warg and another member added to the butchermen. so I moved my warg back.

Just how much damage they did to my spearmen, and this is with one of the butchermen missed the attack. Notice, they have a weapon called a sacrifice dagger, which gives them crit chance and amazing crit damage (early game ruining damage if you ask) while also gives one counter strike. Good thing with spear, my spearmen is immune from the counter attack.

Spearmen missed the attack, but the queen moves forward and did massive 24 damage to butcherman thanks to blessed hammer’s extra attack damage against undead.

With the rest of the troops, I managed to kill everyone else. Another level for my queen.

For the next level, I grabbed Air magic II. This is for tutelage, an enchantment for unit that gives 25% extra experience boost. Yes there are traits that passively gives 25% boost, but it is really a waste of trait points for that. Air II is needed anyway to reach Air IV, so it is win-win here.

I go to spell screen, only to found out I lack mana, so here comes some wait, now my main army stack will go south to clear the spiders and doing the quest while my scout will go to west.

Butchermen’s lair gave me another blessed hammer, blah.

My town completed the all of the buildings queued, so time for new orders.

Cleric for less unrest and monument for more influence zone.

Grabbed the grass, back to the hut, and this happens, of course I will try to kill him.

Easy battle.

Now, remember this potion… This potion is quite powerful and can heal permanent wounds from the champions. If the champion falls from the battle, they get these wounds and won’t disappear even if they are fully regenerated. Only can be healed by 2 potions, and this potion actually can heal any amounts of wounds compared to other potion which only can heal 1 random wound. And that 1 wound healing potion costs 400 to buy later in the game.  Meh, but I am too generous person so I will give this potion to the butcherman.

And he joins me. Notice I will use this zombie aspect of the butcherman, and making him a big 6-men unit from a single man here.

Our scouts explored the west, showing more quests and goodies to grab.

The research finished the restoration. Now still in Civilization tab, I am aiming to grab this World Achievement (must do build order first) ASAP, so I will go Civic and Trading in the research tab.

Now with the research done, I put the order for the workshop and garden. Now Cleric is nearly done so I don’t touch this, but Monument should be the least priority. I want to build the workshop as soon as possible and the garden as well. What I am going to do is…

I press the mouse button on that monument icon on the build queue tab, drag it to the right side, now the build queue is repositioned, and is Cleric -> Workshop -> Garden -> Monument. But this will change again because my first village is nearly level 2.

Now, actually I have gotten far more, but I'd like to cut it here because the scroll is insane at this point. Will continue when the page goes 2.

Answers in red words.

Think you lost me on your answer here, are you agreeing that it was a diagonal and you could use the logging camp? Or saying that is not possible without the snaking mod. Because if it is inside the 8 immediate squares surrounding the city tile, you CAN use that forest, or for that matter a river (for the pier, dock, etc.) if that happened to land in one of the 4 diagonal squares.

If the forest is at a diagonal from the starting city, you can build a lumber mill in that city.  Same for river, as the other poster mentioned.

AFAIK, the snaking mod just changes the rule so that you need to start within 2 squares of a forest/river instead of just within 1 square of it.  I don't use this mod or any other mod, so someone else might know better.

Even if you only use Air + Life, having 2 enchantments on your first city means you can use +initiative enchantment along with +HP enchantment, at a bonus of 2 each.  Or trade the +HP for +Fire Damage since you got a fire magic hero after you started.  I think these bonuses would be more than +1 hammer.

Premade Sov vs Custom Sov - My first game was with a custom sovereign and almost every game after that was also with a custom sovereign.  The comment wasn't directed at you and this game in specific, instead more as a general thing people need to think about for their own games in which they might not be using premade sovereigns.

The Shadow Warg doesn't cost any upkeep because Procipinee has the item Procipinee's Crown, btw.

And guess what, This auto-save got me again. The pioneer trained in my capital city just disappeared when I loaded, with empty population in the city.

I am so frustrated that after more than a year, auto-save is still broken as hell and I suddenly lost will to play this map further. I don't know if I want to continue.

Still there are portions of the writing left to be finished, but I am not in mood to continue to do so.

Nop, still gone. Now I remember more precisely, my pioneer was actually moving on the wild, going to west to make a town city there.

This is just frustrating. Before I stopped playing Elemental and 1.4, Auto-save was at best ok-ish, but now this is something more.