Player guide:Faction design and noble points

--Tom Droeshout 20:14, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

goals in Olympia and faction design I keep getting some mails from new players.

Here is a short overview. It might be more useful to share that information.

The question : what do you want to in Olympia?

Maybe there is something you want to test out in particular? (if you ahve experience in other games)

Keep in mind the following : Oly is limited by 3 things : - nr of NPs - amount of gold (upkeep of troops) - distance (so improving your mobility is always a good thing)

In general there are some different playing styles :

1) beastmasters : simple orders, a bit boring, but you don't have to invest a lot of time in the game : beastmasters that go questing and breed some giant lizards or centaurs. With 18 Np you can go for 9-10 beastmasters. A lot of output. A bit boring (to my taste) for a short time but once you have a force you can do a lot of things

2) mages : go for the long term : several mages and accumulate most of the magic schools. It's +- 50 weeks of research and then you have some super mages. You might shortcut it with ratspiders and eating brains.

3) turtle : go for the short term : find a mountain spot, quarry stone, build a castle, build some human troops : we call it the turtle strategy as most of the players do this and just stay in their castle for an eternity. You'll have to pick your spot carefully, as a castle is imho an illusion and can be easily destroyed. You need peaceful neighbours or backup from an alliance.

4) sailing and multi island approach : tested out by some players and has its merits. You create a lot of cheap nobles and focus on trade income. Do I hear someone saying 200k gold? ;-) You are a nomad and build some roundships that do trading. You settle on several islands to avoid you're wiped as a faction when someone attacks you. Sailing however is not designed very intuitively, many new players suffer a setback the early turns.

5) become the super trader in the safe haven : let your oath 2 stay in the safe haven (no one can kick you out there) : do some player vs player trading : people always need special things : scrolls, beasts, quest items, weapons. It can be collected to sell to other players. Gold is pretty abundant by trade, castle income, etc so it's those other juicy things that are interesting. You might go for a cheap teleporter, auraculize fast.

6) become a mercenary : let other pay you for the dirty work. You are always involved in special missions. Garrisoning, escorts, sneak attacks, scouting, naval strike, even be a mole in someone's alliance etc. You need a special mind set for that though. It's full of action but you need to keep in mind that your nobles can die. But it's not really a problem because the NP system conservates your NP. You get back your NP after 12 turns.

7) "One-Of-Each" sums it up nicely. "All-of-the-above" would also work.

You make a trader and run a traderoute. You make some troops to do some questing. You have a miner and a forester who get your resources for weapons who are trained into some troops. Your mage started with magic, he has researched all spells in magic and you have started a second school a while ago. Your beastmaster has created the horses you need for scouting, he is breeding some centaurs at the moment while he is questing with your warstack to get a chance of catching some exotic beast. And ofc you have finished your castle and after garrisoning the inital provinces you wonder how much land you should have. etc etc

I think this strategy is absolutely brilliant. It's not easy and you are bound to mess up several areas, but I'm sure you'll also succeed in a lot of things. Olympia is faily forgiving that way, you won't screw yourself over beyond repair. Lots of fun to be had, a lot to be learned. And as the game progresses you'll find yourself progressing as well. (training that second mage, beastmaster or you want more nobles to garrison, or you are looking at your neighbours poor defence, or....) and you'll gradually adapt your strategy to what brings you the most joy in game. I would definetly recommend this one over any of the other 'pure' goals. Sure there is merit in specialisation, but it's not necessarily the most fun for everybody.

One word of caution about this though, : find yourself an alliance, or group together with some people who are in the same boat as you are. Alone well, eventually some warships will drop off 10000 troops and march over your defences and your 50/100/150 turns of fearytale-life will be over. Some alliances will allow you a lot of freedom to 'do your thing'. Make sure you don't join the local warlords if you yourself have no interest in attacking etc...

8) You can be a faction that deals in diplomacy and intelligence. I'd think there would be lots of room to make money there. It's somewhat limited by the fact that you can't practice Conceal Self to improve your sneakiness. It's way more interesting in TAG, where there is a whole other level of Stealth versus Ranger, who can "assassinate" or "protect nobles", and can improve concealment (Stealth) or spot hidden nobles (Ranger) with various levels of experience.

9) It would be interesting to be a pirate faction that attacks all these traders hauling stuff around the ocean. The only problem with that is you are limited to selling the captured goods in the city at the end of the route, unless you can establish a new market elsewhere (not that practical if you just capture one load) or have another sneaky trader taking the goods to the original market.

Conclusion :

What many people forget is that this is a multi-player game. If you don't interact with other players, then why bother, Civ IV is better if all you want to do is build. And, as was said above, at some point the other players are going to interact with you, whether you like it or not.

Even you do chose the turtle game, it's a lot more fun to do it with a group of allies, to take over a whole island and attempt to defend it.

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Noble Points. "What should I spend them on?" Up to you, preplan what direction you want your faction to take. Some factions are magic intensive, others go for beastmasters. Some want to explore and quest. Some go for a combination of all and some go for just a few Oathed nobles. So like I said, Preplan what you want to do. I think every faction should have a Mage, Beastmaster and a Priest but that's just me.

To Fear, Contract or Oath. To save money, I suggest converting the loyalty of new nobles to Fear loyalty or Oath them. If you want to conserve on your noble points as well, go for the Fear and beat the livin' tar outta the little guy. I know this seems harsh, but for game play, it is the only way to go. Be careful though, the noble will take a hit to his health. There are solutions in game however to go around that problem.

As I said before, at the start, just learn a few required skills. Speaking of skills, have all of your nobles learn Combat [610], Survive fatal wound [611], Stealth [630] and Conceal self [641] as soon as you can. Those should be four standard skills for almost every noble in Olympia. If you are going to invest a lot of time and money on a noble learning skills, better take the time and noble points to bring that noble up to a Oath 2 rank. There is nothing more frustrating than losing one of your best nobles to a concealed spy hellbent on causing you pain.

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