Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 11:42:22 -0500 (CDT) From: "POU LEE (THE MUG@UH FELLOW)" Subject: Castles:S&C Crowning Guide A Crowning Guide to Castles: Siege & Conquest Version 1.0 May 1994 Please direct all comments and additional tactics and strategies to "poulee@cs.uh.edu". This guide is written presuming players are playing the "Impossible" level with "Geographic" product distribution. Hence if one comprehends the winning approaches elucidated in this guide, one should have less trouble applying them in the lesser playing levels. Another assumption is that players are role-playing the Valois ruler. Introduction CS&C is an excellent strategy game that has tremendous play and replay values through the many carefully and splendidly accomplished implementation of game elements. Computer City sells it for $39.95 versus $49.94 in Software Etc in Houston. This player has played as the Valois King, Yoyoboy, to be declared King of Bretagne by The Pope in the month of January, in the year 1819 after the death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, with the rating Emperor (points above 12000) in the Impossible level. The following is an excursion of the fine points King Yoyoboy has gleaned through those tumultuous years of intense administrative, diplomatic and military maneuvering. General recommendations: 0. 1 to 4 combined Infantry and archer will cost 1 gold and 1 food to maintain. 5 - 9: 2 of each. 1 to 4 knights will cost 2 gold and 2 food to maintain. 5 - 9: each. IMHO, this is the result of the "round-up" algorithm used and a glitch since 5 I/A units should still cost 1 instead of 2 gold/food. 1. Save game often. 2. Use "Save as..." to create saved games of different names every year or two. This allows one to restart from games dated not long but long enough ago in cases of terrible decisions or strategies that have doomed one's current game. 3. Try to build up Administration, Military and Diplomatic points ASAP. Fastest ways of building up the later two categories of points in my knowledge are through soundingly defeating opponent's army and successful diplomatic negotiation, respectively. The former can be achieved either by ingenious tactical maneuvering in the battle field or the sweeping charge of an overwhelming force of knights. The later can be nearly insured through copious applications of all available Diplomatic points to each diplomatic mission with the negotiation range being between that of offering 4 golds to that of offering friendship (the caveat here is 4 or more golds.) 4. Given options in any plot presented, always choose the one costs the most gold. Some good will always come out of it. Always be an appealing and considerate ruler (i.e., spend through options that requires the most gold), and the people will be merrier and the morale of the army stronger. 5. Always maintain a relationship no less than 7 with the Pope. Don't attack any other player blindly, i.e., without checking whether it is blessed by the Pope through the calling of Council when one's relationship with the Pope is below 8. Pope could be easily bought off even when one only has a total of 3 Diplomatic points provided the negotiation range is between that of offering 4 golds to that of offering friendship. When the Pope asks for donation of no more than 3, always provides unless one is financially bankrupt. 6. When the diplomats, particularly that of the Pope, of the other player come calling and requesting gold, anything less than 4 (anything above 3 happens rarely) is acceptable. If one is financially unsound, try to bargain down to 2 or 1. Keep in mind this is normally cheaper than sending diplomat which process automatically costs 1 gold with no 100% guarantee of success. 7. Collect Timber, Gather Food and Attacking progress particularly slowly in winter. Avoid performing these task in winter. 8. Policing the realms increase the efficiency of performing all tasks. It decreases the happiness of people and thus the morale of the armed force by one at the end. Also, any saboteur and spy caught (which occurs statistically higher if so applied by other computer players) will reduce the diplomatic relationship between one and that of the originator. IMHO, the purpose should only strictly be for the increase of efficiency. Losing one Diplomatic point is losing 50 victory point in the end game. Try to carry out Happiness task at the same time to counter the loss of one Happiness point. Also, the more Military points applied, the longer the policing will be. 9. Build castles that weight barely above 100 points and with no moat. (3-2-2 distribution of ability points for this task is good in the early game.) This will accelerate the construction process significantly. Rely on diplomatic relationships (i.e., relationships of 8 or 9, since in the Impossible level, computer player will still attack if it finds out one is weak even though the diplomatic relationship is 6 or 7) and a sizable armed force to prevent any attack. 10. For people who like to use castles for defense purpose, maintain a large archer force. During the siege, position all archers above the Keep and direct their arrows manually at a selected target one at a time for maximum damage and thus rapid disposal of enemy force. Any enemy infantry men that climb up above the Keep will get massacred since usually they arrive one by one to face many more archers. The only drawback with this is that the enemy can still capture the Keep if it has knights that simply park below and withstand the rain of arrows. Another drawback occurs when only enemy archers survive the initial onslaught and the battle degenerates into a shooting match that could possibly go on forever if the enemy archers have obtained well covered positions like the towers. Recommendation: don't let the computer opponents attack to avoid this mess. 11. Maintain high Happiness level for high task efficiency and strong fighting capability. 12. Once any two areas of the ability bars reach 9 (i.e.,in my cases, both Military and Diplomatic ability points of Yoyoboy reach 9 when the Administrative ability still always stays at 7) while the other remains below 8, take a break in the two areas and concentrates on the low area. The program seems to use the frequency of success as one factor in ability point increasing. Hence if one constantly succeeds in two areas, those two abilities will be attempted to be incremented even though they have reached 9, (I though 10 is the max, though) resetting the ability point incrementing check flag back to 0, hence locking the low area. In one game, Yoyoboy's Administrative points remained at 7 till the end even though the total points was around 11500 with nearly 16 castles built and nearly full storage of all products and the Mil. and Dipl. points staying at 9. 13. Try to store up to 99 units of all products. Gold counts twice as many points as the other commodities. 14. Try to maintain a large force of knights (Yoyoboy always kept a force of some 19 knights, invincible in any glorious charge for security and point score) near the end game. Knights count twice as much in the final count. 15. A castle with more than 50 points constructed, will double the resource output of the province it is located in. A castle with more than 100 points constructed, can prevent all juxtaposed provinces from rebellion. The Early Years: The first two provinces. (In lesser level, three or four is OK.) One must start with a province that produces Gold, particularly when playing in the "Impossible" level. No Gold, no go. Restart the game until so. Choose the location wisely so that it is centered around as many provinces as possible for future expansion. Build up infantry and archer units but make sure there is enough material for the construction of a castle. Scout around. The next task is to obtain a province that either produce Iron or Gold. Start building up relationship with the Pope and accumulating and spending Gold whenever possible. After acquiring the second province, use all the remaining material to start construction of the castle in the Gold province. This will eventually double the Gold income and prevent any rebellion in adjacent provinces. The Expansion Years: The third to fifth or sixth provinces. One need to strive to build up one's ability points through constant application of all points to tasks. One need to strive to achieve Ally status (8 or 9 points) with all but the opponent who has provinces "rightfully" yours. Provided one attacks this opponent early enough, it most likely has not achieved Blessed status with the Pope yet and thus no degradation in any relation will result. Once one acquires 5 or 6 provinces, one should strive to maintain with all players Ally status. By acquiring provinces that produce gold and iron, one should have no problem with Gold expenses and infantry unit recruitment and Attacking expense. Once all are peaceful and prosperous, one should strive to build up a large force of knights with all three offensive sieging apparatus. The Crowning (Backstabbing) Years: The sixth, or seventh provinces to at least twelfth province. Keep sending out diplomats to maintain relationship of at least 8. All relationships should be 9 before one claims. Maintain a sizable army for two purposes. The first one is to blitzkrieg any computer opponent who dared to claim the throne. Usually the CO won't do this unless it has an army consisting minimally some 5 infantry, 5 archer and 5 knight units, controlling some 12 to 18 provinces. Don't attack it right away. Let the other CO's attack this "pretender", whittling away its "previously" sizable army to a pitiful guerrilla force of about 2 IU, 2 AU and 2 KU. First send spy to find out its controlled provinces. Then mercilessly apply maximum ability points (i.e. 9 Military, 8 Administrative, 8 Diplomatic) to accelerate the attacking phase in "liberating" as many provinces as possible. Eventually, in several months, the Pope will decide not to back this "pretender" if it has lost a few provinces and the cream of its army. At this time, this ex-"pretender" will start building up relationship points with the Pope to become Blessed in a while. Time to consolidate one's gain and rebuild relationshi p with this loser. The second is to get victory points. Normally Yoyoboy maintains an army of 14 to 19 or 24 knights as end game approaches with at most 9 combined Infantry and Archer units. In the Impossible level, someone will claim the throne around 1216 to 1218. Hence Yoyoboy usually cannot beat the "pretenders" since 12000 victory points usually cannot be accrued till 1219 or later. But if Yoyoboy was the first and had maintained all relationships of 9 with all parties, the throne was a sure thing. The only caveat is to remember one will lose at least around 300 victory points in claiming since all relationships will go down by one point which is equivalent of 50 victory points. The further adventure of Yoyoboy: The journal of Yoyoboy the Pirate in "Pirates Gold", coming to the net by the end of June.