[King of Dragon Pass] This game actively punishes you for being successful.

[Replicante]

Thanks. I'm enjoying it a lot. The thing I dislike is that without some solid prior or metaknowledge there are some events that... Specifically with exploration:

I've been growing my clan consistently and achieved say 30 thanes. Then you send a explorer to Quivin MT which is supposed to be the 2nd tier of exploring. There is this shaman that constantly kidnaps my party. every time I send a huge raiding party (30+) I lose more than half my thanes. Consistently. For the love of God.
And generally speaking, the exploring interface... how long is the area covered my one exploration mission? Should I explore every 2 cm of the map? is it the areas as spaced by mountains and rivers? very mysterious, very confusing and annoying.

 

[Silva]

I don't remember the details on explorations, but I do remember it's the riskier thing in the game, specially in the first one.

Sometimes smaller parties is the way to go, as they keep stealth. This is true for cattle raiding where sending 6 or 7 people (distributed equally among thanes/farmers) improves it's chances. Perhaps something similar works for exploration? I rarely sent more than a dozen people on those IIRC, and my success rate was not bad.

Are you sacrificing for exploration on sacred time?

Are you sending travel gods' devotees to lead the party (I think it's Orlanth and Vinga)? Have you unlocked/enabled the respective blessings in their temples?

Sometimes the dice screw you and it's inevitable though. There was this time I was combing the whole map with this Vinga girl, even perilous spots. After a bunch of missions and even a Heroquest to strenghten her, she became a beast, tribal Lara Croft. Then I sent her on some innocuous mission nearby and she was vanished forever. It's the nature of the game. Be an iron age chad and deal with it.




Edit: and 30 is too many thanes. I never needed more than 22 even in my Humakt bloody campaign where I kicked and enslaved everybody's asses. Quality trumps quantity. Make a shrine to Humakt with the main blessings, specially the one where each thane is worth double in combat (Truesword?).

 

[Replicante]

thanks for the tips about combat. I didn't take into account more is necessarily beter, still, you can use extra thanes to defend and raid simultaneously. I havent built even one Humakti shrine, so I'll def do that. I do have a pathfinder (vinga) operative. Must be that this event is particularly punishing and meant to be. I dont know exactly what you mean by sacrificing to "exploring". Perhaps I should sacrifice to my ancestors and get the spirit defense shrine.

My economy is strong, in the 1100+cows and 200+goods (nomrla difficulty). Still, taking into the account the apparently "necessary shrines", one chalana arrow for healing, VInga for pathfinder, Orlanth for rain Barntar for plowing, Cow mother, and so on, it quickly can get out of hand and wreck my economy. Perhaps I should shift more smoothly onto a dif. playstyle once I got my food production sorted, IDK.

Thanks for the tips

 

[laclongquan]

Do you complete at least half of school routes in Academagia? Not just one routes but at least 6 routes?

Academagia present background writings in each school route is bias toward that school philosophy, not just different writings. Thus to have complete (or 3/4 complete) understanding of each event or quest, one route is nowhere near enough.

This is like KODP where you play each strategical way differently. A hero-focus game is different than an artisan-number game is different than territory-focus game is different heroquest-focus game. You dont need to play all 4 to have full writings, but the feel of the game, that can be only be achieved by play all 4.

New rule, no talk about Academagia till they finish year 2. Fucking 10 years. So GRRM/Rothfuss type shit.

What they are not doing one year per half year? They should release it as noncommercial freeware and do it in theirs spare time. They would be faster.

From what I understand of this shit, writing is actually the least of their problems. They can churn out loads of writing easily.

It's the spaghetti codes and fixing bugs from there that is time consuming~

There's just too many variables (skill, skill level, quest, quest result that would affect somewhat on the next quest...) Especially if they want to keep quest results of 1st year to have effects on quests of 2nd year. Now that's what we call data bloats~

Problem is, they are mini dev studio, so most of their coders are on making new quests and new contents (thus making money) and less on fixing bugs (post sale service thus not making money). The opposite demands can be bloody taxing~

 

[Silva]

thanks for the tips about combat. I didn't take into account more is necessarily beter, still, you can use extra thanes to defend and raid simultaneously. I havent built even one Humakti shrine, so I'll def do that. I do have a pathfinder (vinga) operative. Must be that this event is particularly punishing and meant to be. I dont know exactly what you mean by sacrificing to "exploring". Perhaps I should sacrifice to my ancestors and get the spirit defense shrine.

My economy is strong, in the 1100+cows and 200+goods (nomrla difficulty). Still, taking into the account the apparently "necessary shrines", one chalana arrow for healing, VInga for pathfinder, Orlanth for rain Barntar for plowing, Cow mother, and so on, it quickly can get out of hand and wreck my economy. Perhaps I should shift more smoothly onto a dif. playstyle once I got my food production sorted, IDK.

Thanks for the tips

As a war clan you can swap the usual food/cattle shrines that a pacifist needs for warfare ones instead (Humakt, Elmal and Orlanth) and take your food/cattle from raids and tributes. Health, clan mood, trade, etc. are always good though. The number of maximum shrines you can build (and upgrade) depends on your population. But don't fall in the trap of increasing pop just for that. The ideal pop is on the verge of clan splitting but never really splitting. If you happen to cross that threshold though, do it, it's better to split and rebuild than live with internal conflict.

Don't fight everyone. Select a handful enemies and alternate raiding them. Select others to be allies and treat them well. When the time comes to form a tribe, invite your allies to it.

I recommend befriending the ducks (Durulz) as they're a headache otherwise.

Don't neglect heroquests. When your ring members tell the time is due, do it, even with no immediate concerns in sight. They strenghten your clan mood, reputation and leaders.

You sacrifice to exploration during Sacred Time - the screen that shows up each new year where you allocate magic points.

 

[Replicante]

Thanks, sorry for my grammar in the previous post, I was in a bit of hurry and it was poorly written. So thank you again for deciphering it :D

Yeah, I did get the clan split event and gave them lands. When that happens, you start thinking how can you permanently empower your clan. Since too much pop.&resources splits the clan, I'm probably better off trying to trade for treasures. Can't think of anything else really. Shrines are ok, but the upkeep is really huge. Specially when you cant tweak the number of crafters or seize more land, which is allowed in the original. So this shift of gameplay can be a bit confusing.

Investing in ring members also seems good but they do die of old age. In a sense, this is interesting gameplay wise, cause it does force you to be in your toes.

Ah, I just noticed that I didnt have the proper ring member to be able to sacrifice to exploring. That must be it. I should also include a trickster, I've been playing with 2 worshippers of Orlanth which the game says is bad but doesnt explain why, sth to do with hero quests apparently.

What a different vibe playing this game tho, it's quite a thing

pd: is there a typical, average number of years in game which can be considered early, mid and late game? As in, I should be looking for get king rep and form a tribe on the first 30 years (just an example) so I can get a general sense of urgency in the game?

 

[Silva]

Hmm, I cant remember the signis of early/mid game but you should be progressing in the Reputation tracker. If it's taking too long with no progress in it, you're doing some wrong.

You should have the council ring formed by devotees of the 7 lightbringers as much as possible. Exceptuating a trickster, optionally. Otherwise your magic and clan stability will suffer.

Something VERY important in this game is to enter the mindset of an iron age clan, and that includes tradition. Try to follow your clan tradition and myths as much as possible, both the overarching Orlanthi ones, and the ones you created yourself during clan creation. There are areas and situations where one can deviate and innovate instead, but those are rare and usually enabled by way of super strong leaders and favoring odds.

 

[Silva]

Replicante , I just noticed KoDP doesn't have an Exploration item in Sacred Time. It's Six Ages tha does. My bad. In that case, your best bet is stacking the other factors In your favor (vingan/orlanthi leaders, blessings, etc). Don't remember if there's a heroquest to help with expeditions.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think your herd size is unlimited. If you have to split then it goes down but if you don't split or keep your pop low enough to not trigger a split then it can grow indefinitely. Or at least high enough that you should be good for most herd-related things like sacrifices. If you take herd-related blessings and are very successful raiding you should have no trouble with them. Trading goods for cattle with whoever has the most is a very easy and dependable way to increase herd size and they'll generally trade around 1:1 which is very good for you. In general goods are the easiest thing to produce so trading them for anything is a good deal, just keep a buffer for your temples at sacred time.

I think crafters in new KoDP are just assumed to always be at their maximum for your population. This was what you always wanted to do in the original.

Ways to permanently/semipermanently acquire power:
- Artifacts, especially from heroquests and trading. I think the price you pay for artifacts from trade goes up the more you have but you can usually find a great artifact or two early on and only pay 50 goods or so, which is absolutely a steal.
- New resources for crafters. I'm not sure how it works but I believe its a multiplier to crafter production. I think most/all of them are linked to exploring your tula?
- Trading Routes. The more you maintain the better. Issaries is always a good god to get started on with a better temple since it directly gives consistent bonus goods from more trade routes.
- Temples. Of course they have upkeep but most good blessings are well worth it. Number of temples is linked to population so going over the soft pop cap for clan splitting can help since you can maintain them afterwards.

Exploration is ALWAYS very risky when done outside of your lands. Certain places of the map are virtually guaranteed to kill the party and offer no reward. Don't send any member of the ring that you want to keep around.

Another strat is to do a hero quest and choose to empower the quester (choose someone young, ideally you want them to be your chief). From there if you wait a decent 3ish years they should be able to keep doing that and get great stats in whatever their god supports. In the end almost everything in the game is reliant on a stat check so having a godlike character kind of makes everything go in your favor. Still wouldn't dare have them explore or fight in battle even if they are a superhuman though. Things like fighting a warrior fated to kill the next person he fights, or a dragon, is gonna murder you regardless I think.

Ohh, and if you haven't figured this out, to get more weaponthanes first send them all out exploring so you have 0, then you can recruit the maximum number and have more when they come back. I'm not sure how you are supposed to get a decent number of them otherwise.