A guide with things to keep in mind and on how to get started on handling the crusading portion of the game.
Intro
All credit goes to Madmouse Ked!
This guide will cover the basics, it’s not a cheatsheet persay, though I will give you suggestions on how to get started.
Because of this the guide will largely be spoiler free, it will not reference future events or ingame events beyond the point where this guide itself becomes relevent in the game.
The goal of this guide is to unveil the logic of the decisions being made and allowing you to make your own decisions with an informed hand, see it as an advisor not a dictate.
Economy
An army marches upon its stomach, and no commander may acquire supplies without cold hard cash.
There are 4 numbers which to keep in mind for any commander.
Morale, Finance Points, Materials Points, Energy points.
These resources are earned and spent by taking actions upon the campaign map.
- Morale: A relatively hard to influence stat, it’s difficult to outright buy Morale. High morale gives you extra income, unit growth and allows units on the battlefield to occasionally take their turn twice. Conversly, low morale decreases all the same attributes. Do not let morale stay low for too long as it makes winning future battles more difficult.
- Finance Points: You spent these primarily on purchasing units and mercenaries. You will need a healthy amount of them.
- Materials: Used to build buildings which give you income, bonuses to your army and grow your recruitable units each week.
- Energy points: Used as a bit of a special resource. Does a bit here and a bit there. Don’t neglect, don’t push for it either it’s a luxury resource especially early on.
Drezen Taken
Once you have taken over Drezen you should be in control of it, Keepers canyon, Hamlet of Sork, Vilareth’s ford’s outpost and Gargoyle canyon.
All in all these amount to 5 posts.
In each of them start by building a Supply center. Each supply center increases the income of materials by 3. And only one supply center can ever be build in each town.
The reason for this is quite simple, material is at the start one of the largest bottlenecks. We give up the opportunity for early soldiers, whom we can’t afford, so we can get our early economy going.
After having build a supply center in each of those places I personally recommend building at least 2 inns, in any of the 4 small towns. Do not build an inn in Drezen.
Each inn provides us with 200 finance points of income per day, if you have done as I suggest you should be sitting upon quite a decent little pile of finance points. Do not worry about that, you will spent them all at some point.
Income Basic
If you have followed the above suggestion you should have improved your material income by 15, and your finance point income by 400. It’s not much but it is a daily income. They will have paid for themselves before long!
Now however it is time to make a decision, and it all comes down to what you value.
For each town you conquer, beyond Drezen of course, you decide whether it shall be an economical town or a military town.
This decision exists simply because inns do not provide their finance point income in towns which have also constructed a military growth structure, in fact the game (helpfully) prevents you from building one or the other once you have constructed either an inn or a military growth building.
For Drezen the decision is simple, we have to construct the main military buildings there, if we do not then we can NOT grow any military units, we will still be capable of recruiting mercenary’s but the reliable and predictable growth of core units will prove invaluable to your crusade.
Regardless of what kind of town we wish to specialize into, it remains recommended that you add supply centers to them. It’s a cheap building, provides a very valuable resource on the daily, and it gives you experience towards your logistics level.
Income Advanced
Buildings like the hospital and the alchemist’s hut allow you to buff your armies in two distinct ways.
There’s also of course the lodge and the university which improve your mercenary’s and generals respectively.
The hospital gives you 5% casualty replenishment growth, this means you can lose more soldiers during the battle before they permanentaly die, this is fundamentally a game about getting the biggest doomstack possible. Therefore we do not ever want to permanentaly lose units that we care about. The hospital helps with that. Do not relly on it, and do not priorotize it. But remember it exists when you have a spare slot and money to spend.
The Alchemists hut on the other hand is an amazing structure that you should want to care about.
And all it does is very simply, give every single general you have an increased mana pool of 10.
Spells in combat are busted, particularily the bind opponent spell can and will singlehandedly decide the outcome of battles that you have absolutely no right of winning, and you will win it without suffering a single permanent loss. Isn’t that fantastic. Healing’s also costly on the old mana, it adds up! Do not forget about your humble alchemists. Embrace the mana.
The lodge is a straightforward building +1 bonus to your mercenary troops, it is not even that expensive. Get it before the hospital and the alchemist, most likely you will be using mercenary’s for a long while, even if only as a defense force. Bigger stats means you get more value for your money.
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