Slitherine

Wow I finally managed to get logged in and past a nginx error...

Anyhow, this thread is meant to be a discussion on strategy for the Picts et Caledonia faction (henceforth referred to as the Picts for brevity).

I recently tried my first real foray into the game and selected the Picts since they are a bit out of the way. It did not go well.. It should be said right away, they can be a difficult faction to play by my accounting, for reasons explained below.

Should anyone have any tips or suggestions please post and let us know.

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Game Start

At the beginning of the main scenario, the Picts start with 2 regions, with independent regions separating it from its Celtic neighbors in the South, the Brigantes and the Britonae. There is also Hibernia over on Ireland. The Picts will have easy access to early objectives but suffer from civil war and fragmentation on leader death while having a Tier I government.

Perhaps the toughest thing about the Picts, as opposed to nations like Rome and the Successors, is that most of the regions in the area have very low population and basically zero infrastructure.

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What did I do wrong?

So I can answer the above question readily. I got all excited about dominating the British Isles can expanded too fast. When Brigantes and the Brits wanted to start a fracas I curb stomped them and took their stuff. I expanded into independent areas, prioritizing objectives. The Caledonian culture in some regions made expansion relatively easy. Of course, this led to me quickly accruing Decadence. I was Glorious Tribe for quite awhile but never got enough progress tokens to advance to Tier II, which led to issues when my leaders died. I eventually had conquered almost all the British Isle regions (except one marsh with Brits sitting in it) before turn 100. But cultural revolts would be a major pain in the butt along the Southern coast. One issue I ran into was in some of the low frontage regions. The Celtic factions appear to be able to field Britonic units with 8 to 11 combat power and I could only recruit combat power 5 units in Scotland. I eventually realized I could recruit those strong Britonic units as provincial units in Britannia Superior but it was a bit too late.

I eventually gave up, realizing I could never get out of my situation with Decadence issues. Even trying to build cultural buildings to try to fix my CD ratio, it was just too much while I tried fighting off the revolts. Just got frustrating. It was unclear what military buildings I would have needed to build better, native Pictish units. I think I had iron at some point, but my building strategy was a bit haphazard.

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General Strategy Thoughts

So to my mind the obvious thing to watch out for is the need to prioritize food at the beginning. Without food, no population and it starts very low as it is. From there, probably makes sense to focus on infrastructure buildings to that future buildings can get done more quickly. From there financial, military, and culture based on need.

The obvious thing I guess is to expand slowly. Perhaps avoiding Celtic regions entirely for a long time. I'm not super clear on how to manage regions of a different culture other than constructing buildings that support conversion.

Doing my swift expansion, I managed to get to around 4th place in Legacy, often 100 points separating me from the #1 spot. I'm not sure what the Legacy gain would look like if expanding slowly. I'd be worried about never catching up to Rome/Carthage/Ptolemy/etc. Maybe someone with more game experience can touch on this.

The final thing that comes to mind is unit availability. Until I can figure out the natural progression for Pictish units, it makes sense to eventually be recruiting those better quality Britonic units in Britannia Superior when expansion reaches those locations. Metaris is damn near impossible if the enemy has a decent stack there, unless infantry superiority is gained.

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So please, add your thoughts! I appreciate any feedback. FoG: Empires is a cool game and I really appreciate the FoGII connectivity. Good job AGEOD.

There are two slightly contradictory early game goals:

a) get out of civ 1 asap - I usually manage this by my second ruler
b) save some of your at start objectives - or you will get stuck as civ 1 glorious

The first means its ceilidh time in the Highlands. Remember a single pop pt can't actually die of famine, so put them into culture. Focus your pop on culture and you should get the first 5 tokens with some ease. Expand slowly, make sure every acquired region has loyalty>80 before you take another.

This should get your first 5 tokens (say 3 from the CDR, 2 off conquests).

Prepare for your first royal death - if you've been cautious, then you should escape a civil war.

As a glorious civ 1 then decadence bites more (govt age comes into play more strongly), now take some more of your objectives (but try to leave a couple of the local ones if you can). Don't rush at this, its not just the objective token, each takes 20% off your govt age.

Its still party time.

You can pay for all this fun by getting your neighbours to pay. A must build is a pirates lair. Then send groups of 4 pirate ships off to regions like Denmark and Germany, each raid should get you 10-40 gold (so they pay for themselves and then you have net income). Its actually worth sending a fleet to the Med, raid the smaller powers and you can get around 100 per success (the value of the raid is related to the value of the income). In a MP game, be careful who you raid (I forgot to turn off the raid order when I was redeploying my tourists), in SP, just look for weakly defended regions.

This combination of domestic culture and external income should get you to civ 2. Now reset things for a normal functioning economy (the civ war risk is over). Still don't rush at your objectives, getting out of being glorious/civ 2 is a challenge and the objectives can be really useful both as tokens and the 20% off govt age.

The solution to the British is heavy infantry, so I'd wait till you barracks before seriously pushing into perfidious albion. Ireland is a better first conquest.

Taking ceitic cultured regions as such is no big deal - they take a little longer to come out of unrest but as long as they are relatively low population there is no real loyalty issue. The nasty thing is the Druids hideout, there is usually one lurking in southern England. Put a big army of hairy Picts onto that region - not just as it will inevitably revolt but this is the way to discover and destroy the damn thing.

Can you win? Possibly. There is a fun Pict AAR where the player exploited the supply capacity of pirates (they can't run out and an army stack moving with them stays in supply) to invade the Med and start to knock out the legacy leaders. If you have HI, and look to fight in rough terrain, this is feasible. Unfortunately he never completed the AAR so no idea if it actually worked in the end.