Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:38 pm
Hi towerbooks,
I have played AgeOD's Rise of Prussia before, and am now getting stuck into AJE for the last few weeks - and having a great time.
You are right that some of the elements of the Ageod games can be a bit hard to understand. But IMO it is not necessary to grasp all the details in order to play and win scenarios.
My suggestion would be:
STEP1: play tutorial several times, read manual (which you have done).
STEP2: read this entertaining AAR from Narwhal, which actually has 'beginners corners' which cover the most important subjects such as combat, leadership and supply in an understandable way (although for v1.0 so slightly out of date):
(EDIT, I cannot post links, but google for +paradoxplaza +"the-hero-the-traitor-and-the-barbarian-an-aje-pbem-beginner-aar" and you will find it).
STEP3:
Play the 'Four emperors' scenario as Vespasianus (who starts in the Middle East): you are in a strong position with decent army and good income, and will get to play around with army/navy against different types of opponents. There are no real gotcha's to trip you up (but keep two legions near Parthia to avoid an invasion!).
A few basic pointers that I found useful:
- Heavy infantry seems strongest, so the starting rule is to have your field armies based around heavy infantry, with at least one cavalry unit added so you are not blind, and supply wagons for food and 10% combat bonus. Light inf is decent in bad terrain.
- Ensure that your super stacks have enough leadership to not have a command penalty (mouse over the little envelope) and the best leaders.
- Merge all leaders in thatarmy stack with individual units (eg: centurion with legion), apart from the stack leader who will be unmerged (but still in the stack of course!). He will give bonuses to each unit in the stack, while the merged leaders will give additional bonuses to their merged unit only.
- IF storms happen (% chance based on season, Winter having highest chance), then they occur in the same ~two dozen sea zones, which is signified by a cloud appearing. Any other sea zones NEVER have storms, not even in winter. So the location is not random at all, the chance is just whether a storm is triggered in that location during the coming turn (clouds refelect the last turn).
- don't move in snow if you can avoid it. You will lose readiness but also incur actual lossess.
- don't run out of supply (cooking pot completely red); your amry will melt away and fight badly.
- buying replacements for your existing units is in the ledger (F2), while buying new units with money happens via the statue in the bottom left corner. I do not know why this is split. Buying units via engagement points happens via ledger (F3).
I am more or less playing scenarios from the top, usually as every side, and haven't played 'Ager Gallicus' myself yet.
But if you have more general gameplay questions, let me know.
-von Schmidt