New Players mini-guide

[DooberGuy]

AGEOD mini guide for beginners

Welcome to the world of AGEOD. This guide has been written with the desire to guide new players on the basics of the AGEOD system at a high level. I highly recommend reading the manuals, but I understand some people struggle to get through a hundred page document.

Every AGEOD game has its own unique characteristics, however certain broad generalities exist that I will try to explain below as simply as I can.

Broadly speaking AGEOD games have the following systems that the player will need to understand to play at a competent level:

1) Weather
2) Combat
3) Leadership
4) Supply
5) Production

Weather

I will start with Weather as it is the easiest to understand. Weather is set semi-randomly by the game based on the month of the year. Winter months will have a higher likelihood of cold weather and Summer months will be bright and sunny.
The weather will affect you in the following ways:
1) Your soldiers will get tired at a faster rate when marching in mud/snow
2) Defenders will get a bonus when defending in bad weather
3) Attrition will increase during bad weather, particularly in the games set pre-WW1
4) Supply lines and supply sources will get diminished during bad weather

In general, you need to make sure your troops are not moving in winter months, and ideally are sitting in an area with a settlement. The games set in the 30 years war and English civil war for example will punish operations in the winter with severe attrition. You can somewhat offset this effect by having supply wagons with your troops. Any weather ‘hits’ will eat up supply before killing your troops.

Combat

Combat looks complicated, but you really don’t need to know all the modifiers to be successful. The main items you need to understand are leadership (more on that later), combat power, and modifiers.

Combat power is the strength of your units. Each unit has a power level which you can see by hovering your mouse over your armies. You can also see the power of your enemies’ armies, although this is an estimate provided from your scouts and may or may not be accurate. The higher your combat power, the stronger your force. This number is heavily dependent on how rested your troops are. A huge army that has been marching through the mud will see its combat power plummet, and then will shoot back up again as the men rest.

Typically speaking a force with higher power will beat a force with lower power. Some randomness exists though, and modifiers will adjust the power levels when a battle occurs. The exact mix of units usually isn’t a huge deal, but you should make sure you keep Infantry/Cavalry with your vulnerable units like Artillery and Supply Wagons.

There are a lot of combat modifiers, but most of them are logical to anyone who has played a war game or read any history. Attacking across a river will be difficult, attacking in a snowstorm will be difficult, attacking an entrenched enemy will be difficult and so on. After a battle you will see a window breaking down the results. Hovering your mouse over the icons will tell you what the modifiers were.

Leadership

Depending on the game the way leadership works can vary a bit, but certain items are always applicable. Leaders have a rank, usually 1, 2 or 3 stars. The more stars you have, the more units you can command. If you don’t have enough commanders for a force, the troops combat power will begin to become impaired. In some of the game’s leaders can form multiple units into one combat force (sometimes called wings, divisions, etc.).

Usually you will use 1 & 2 star generals to form these forces which I will call divisions, but can go by other names. The benefit of these divisions is that they take less leaders to command than when they are split up. In games with Corps you need 2 star generals to command and in games with armies you’ll need 3 star generals to command.

Beyond their rank, every leader has an initiative rating, an attack rating, and a defense rating. The higher the number the better for all the ratings. Initiative is critical as low initiative leaders are often inactive and can not assault and are penalized in combat. Usually, a leader with a 4 or better in the initiative column will be one of your primary leaders.

Attack and defense rating do what you would expect, they give bonuses to attack and defense.

There are also a host of leader attributes that you can see when you open up the leader profile. Most are self-explanatory and explained when hovering over an icon. For example, ‘cavalryman’ means the leader has a bonus leading cavalry.

Supply

This is probably the hardest segment to explain as it varies by game quite a bit. In the more ‘modern’ era games like the American Civil War and WW1 you will need to create supply lines via the use of supply depots. If your units go too far from a supply depot, or if your supply lines are cut your troops will begin to suffer attrition and suffer combat penalties. Roads and railroads help a great deal with supply.

In the older games you don’t have supply lines that are linked together. Supplies are generated at cities and do not travel forward to your forces more than a single province away. For example, in the 30 years war game your supply is produced primarily by cities. You will need to keep your armies near these cities to stay in supply. If you leave a city you will need supply wagons to keep you supplied in the field. Gradually you will use up these supplies and after they are used up, you will need to send your wagons home for more supplies. For long sieges I recommend a ‘wagon train’ setup where every turn you have some wagons heading back for more supplies and some wagons heading from your city to your army. This means its very normal to have 4-6 wagons for a large army with 2-3 moving forward and back with a cavalry escort.

To see how much supply a city generates, hold your mouse over the city and it will tell you the ‘supply level’. A large city will give you more supply than a small city. Building a huge army is generally a bad idea in the games set in pre-American civil war games. For example, in the English Civil War an army with a power over 2K will have a hard time feeding itself, especially in the winter. In pre-American civil war games depots do not work as supply line extensions. Instead, they function to increase the supply level that a city produces. A depot in a large city is where you will want to winter your largest armies.

Production

Most AGEOD games have resources that can be used to buy new units or fix damaged ones. It is cheaper to fix up damaged units by buying replacement chits than it is to build brand new units. The game will often give you scripted reinforcements as well. Sometimes these units will not be at full strength and you will need replacements to build them back up. I recommend focusing on buying replacements for damaged units before building new ones.

[Pocus]

Congrats for the will to help new players!

[Durk]

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[lodilefty]

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[Jannick]

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[course123]

I really like how you have summarized and characterized some categories of which I did not see connections so clearly.

[khizar123]

The higher your combat power, the stronger your force. This number is heavily dependent on how rested your troops are. A huge army that has been marching through the mud will see its combat power plummet, and then will shoot back up again as the men rest.