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Turn Four
Ok, you guys picked Mill Foundry, people after my own heart. It’ll be ready in 6 turns
We’ve also done our first parley with a minor faction, the Silics (crystal people) of Brenla (to our northeast).
This quest kind of blows for us - they want us to destroy a village of Hurnas (orcs). Our army is spread out all over the place, we really don’t have the concentration to destroy the orcs on a particularly quick time table. This also locks us out of parley with the Hurnas of Eraadh.
In happier news, our hero reached level two!
OK, now it’s time to talk about hero skills
All heroes have three interlocking skill trees.
The blue one on the left is determined by which class the hero belongs to - in this case, ranged. The other class options are infantry and support. The ranged class focuses on mobility and offense, and the guy meditating towards the top of the tree increases the range of all ranged units in the army by one, which is a pretty big deal.
The orange one on the right is determined by which faction the hero belongs to - in this case, Roving Clans. Faction skills predominantly determine what sort of governor the hero will grow into. Roving Clans heroes give strong bonuses to trade routes, giving good dust income in the middle to late game but with scant benefit in the early game.
The green tree in the center is common to all heroes, though the links it has with the other trees is dependent on the class and faction of the hero. The early skills are useful for exploration, while the top skill negates the ill effects of winter on the army/city the hero is leading, which is a huge deal and a skill that virtually every hero will try to pick up once they’re high enough.
We’ve now parlayed with the Sisters of Mercy in Utanla as our faction quest tells us - they give us this
This is a royal screwjob for us. Ten dye is not a lot of dye, but we don’t have the technology necessary to extract it. Worse, I can’t even find any evidence of it in any regions. And on top of that, there’s only two dye on the market. It’s possible I’ll uncover some dye in an easily colonizable region shortly, but barring that we might just have to kill the Sisters of Mercy.
The market is one of two ways you spend dust (the other being rushing production). Here, you convert your hard-earned money into resources (strategic or luxury), food/industry/science via the stockpile menu, units, and heros. This is the only way to get heros other than the starting hero and through a few quests.
So we’ve got some choices ahead of us now.
The first is that hero’s skillpoint. We’ve got three options. If we go down the left tree, the first thing we’ll get is +1 move for her and all troops she commands. This is useful both now while we’re exploring and later on when we’re fighting, and we lead to her being a better general later down the line, but with no benefits for governorship. We can go down the right tree, which will eventually make her a better general but will provide us with virtually no benefit until we start getting trade routes in era two. And we can start on the center, and get the increased chance of ruins success, which will benefit us significantly right now and much less so later down the line, though we would have some creative options for how to build her later. She has dust efficiency two, which is good for governors, and army health boost two, which is good for leading armies but particularly for leading mercenary armies.
The second is how do we spend our dust. Within the next turn or two, we’ll be able to either buy two mercenaries OR buy a hero, but not both. Normally I’d not even ask and go for the hero, but we get double HP on our mercenaries, and we have a quest to wipe out a village of Hurnas. So this is kind of a question of do we get started on getting another hero up and ready while they’re cheap, or do we try to complete the quest for the Silics of Brenla first? At this point in the game, we only have three heroes available for hire, and I’m going to just not even put it up to a vote and say we get the hero with industry efficiency two, who will make an extremely powerful governor for most of the game.
The third is deeply related to the second: which region do we colonize next? We’re going to have our first settler out shortly. I’m going to limit our choices for now to Brenla and Utanla. Brenla has two villages that we can pacify quite quickly, which is a huge boost to the early power of the city. Utanla has a much more powerful starting location. Brenla has two wine, which is great for enabling our later expansion once we get the tech to mine it. Utanla borders an unknown neighbor and might get snatched from under our noses if we don’t take it now while Brenla looks much safer for back capping.