[.915] Faction Power Rankings?

Been playing since the disaster known as WOM. Those faction numbers don't mean a damn thing at least not yet. Some will tell you that they do but no at this time just ignore them.  

First off play more on Challanging to develop you statagy before moving up to Expert. Once in Expert Stay with one city for awhile until you are able to clear out your immediate area.  Build outpost around any resource you see but make sure you can handle the creatues next to it first.

Kill any pioneers you see close to you because if you don't then they will build outpost and block you in.  Remember monsters rarly attack the AI so don't depend on them to help you with the Player AI's.  keep an Eye on your tax levels and adjust if need be.  You don't have to do this so much at the lower Challange levels but for Expert on up it is a good idea to keep an eye on them.

If a big monster starts to get close to your town lead it away with a unit (perferably a cheap unit) Monsters love to chase Player units.

And when the oppotunity presents itself capture the enemies cities.

Thanks, that seems like sound advice! Two more questions- what's a good benchmark for expansion? As in, what's "par" season-wise for building a second city? A third? 

Also, for my first city, should I go for materials or grain? It would seem like materials are more important early on, but I don't really understand the mechanics of population- how much does it contribute to production/research?

I find expansion very difficult to unless I am using Master Scouts trait, in which case I expand like crazy.

Otherwise, Bellack's advice is good, although I disagree about the faction power being useless.  Having a higher faction power than someone else means the AI is less likely to declare war on you, and also is more likely to surrender if you are at war with them (I think if your faction power is double opponent's they will surrender).

With the Master Scouts expansion strategy, you can skyrocket your faction power by placing lots of cities and having a high population.  Having this high faction power means your opponents never declare war (you get a lot of diplomacy points with faction power), which means you can just continue to grow in power exponentially to your opponents. Then when high enough, you can just submit your opponents by declaring war and demanding they surrender straight away without actually having to fight them.  I won a game without training a single unit (except pioneers) and without fighting a single non-monster battle that way on hard.

I think materials are more useful early on, especially if you have enchanted hammers.  You can double or triple your production output very quickly.  Food is only useful insofar as you have "enough" of it, which you always will have early game.  But you can never have too much production.

Also note that the amount of food does NOT affect growth rate, which is why it does very little early game.

I'm still trying to work out the mechanics of population, seems really complicated.

Never used Master Scout. Did you do this on higher difficulty levels (above Challanging?)

I've hesitated to use Master Scouts, seems not only overpowered (free scout trait equivalent would have been fine), but it also ruins the early game atmosphere of the world being an inhospitable place. So I have avoided Tarth, and as I said above, I don't like custom factions either. So I don't think that either will be part of my strategy, but thanks for putting that out there.  

So where does that leave me? What about early research targets? Is there anything that can give me an edge? So far I usually do civics, shard harvesting, standing army, then usually knowledge-> mining or agriculture. Is this sensible? 

I usally research the basic Civs then move to Military tree and focus on that.  I only research the Magic tree to unlock the Champ/quest stuff but usally not much more than that. Magic Tree is still pretty weak in this game.

From what I can tell the power rankings have to do with how many units you have.  The AI tends to spit out a lot of units and not build it's cities very much.  In the long run this will catch up to the AI.  Level your starting heros/leader and give them some units and you should be able to handle most anything the AI sends at you as long as you don't end up fighting several kingdoms.  Hint: experience after a battle is divided between heroes and units separately.  So the more heroes you have in a stack the slower they will level.

In terms of city growth food is the limiting factor to how big you can build, but prestige is how fast the city grows.  Prestige falls into two categories. Kingdom wide prestige, which you can see at the top of the screen.  Which comes from tech and heroes.  This is divided between all your cities so the more cities you have the slower they grow.  Cities can also build buildings which add to their individual prestige.  All this will probably change with beta four.

Personally I like to get spears as quickly as possible (unless I am playing as Pariden) and get the early civ and magic techs too.  From there it depends on my strategy but leather working and agriculture are pretty important early on.  Really all the civ techs on the Agriculture line are usefull early.

In terms of growth I try and get my second city ASAP.  After that its a matter of what size map and how many AI are on it.  Because of how unrest works, your cities are always better than cities you have captured.  But the AI is probably always going to have more cities than you, its not to big a deal.

Re: Bellack

I just tested the strategy again on Expert, and it's still broken.  I've submitted 3 out of 4 opponents without even a single battle.  I have twice the faction power of the opponents I meet early on, which eventually grows to 3x and 4x the faction power of the final two opponents.  Early submission means I get all the perks of those sovereigns to, including the Merchant +2 Gold.

You can win this way by ONLY building pioneers constantly with Master Scouts ability and city spamming--You don't need protection in your cities because the CPUs are too scared of your power to declare war on you, and of course monsters won't attack you either.

I have doubts whether you need to do ANY kind of fighting at all.  Once you get enough pioneers you can use them to protect any outposts and shrines you build on from creatures, as creatures will walk through outposts but not through Master Scout units.

I may test it on Insane difficulty, since Expert was a walk in the park.

Yea that does sound broken.  I may have to do a test on this as well.

Looks like an unintended consequence of cheap, no wage pioneers and the way the game calculates power ratings.

Re: Master scout on Insane

I do not think it will work, at least not by itself.  Even if you play on a large map with few AIs, so that you actually have room to expand, you will be surprised by how fast the AI grows.  I have an AAR with Master Scout and Insane here.  I do not abuse pioneers (i.e. I have not settled any cities by turn 40, I do not make outposts before monsters have been cleared, etc...)

But still, here are a few facts:

On turn 22, Yithril's capital had 165 citizens, 96 research, and 170 production. 

On turn 40, Magnar's power was 1676.  Good luck trying to get them to surrender.

On turn 42: Yithril is by far the weakest nation (I am crushing them) but they have 5 heroes, and no less that 12 trained units.  Their single city grows by 30 citizens per turn.

I'm not disagreeing with you.  Master Scout is broken - I started a topic on that myself.  But by itself, I do not think it will beat insane, not unless you get one Hell of a starting position.

I haven't tried insane yet but faction power of 1676 by turn 40 is "insane".  Was that a freak result?

You say you didn't settle cities by turn 40 but by turn 40 I probably had about 8-10 cities so I would be using a different strategy to you.  I guess it could only win in the long run if I didn't have CPUs breathing down my neck, so I would probably have to use a custom sovereign + faction and abuse the OP customisation, possibly with some diplomacy perks and a lot of tribute giving to win.

The Magnar are the exception, but their power rating is not a bug.  They have 6+ heroes running around with champion plate and Boreal blades, and multiple cities - they started in the middle, and relatively far away from everybody.  I'm about to attack them, because they are blocking my side's expansion. 

But the other AIs are no slouches.  Gildar's capital income is 3000+ Gildars per season, and everyone's research is over 150 when mine is 30ish.

I did not fail to expand because I did not want to.  There was only one place that I could have theoretically settled, and to get there I had to clear multiple 111hp cave bears.  Ten Insane AIs on a large map... and I was not very lucky with placement.

In any case, the AAR is here, except it's not after action, it's in progress (Frankly, it's too much work, so I only play it sporadically)  There are some large scale maps, and you can see the rankings in some screenshots.