Re: I now remember why it's been so long...

From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 11:17:31 -0800 (PST)

First question is: have you been at the combat screen and read what your ring is saying? Sometimes they will identify a problem that may not be obvious to you, like the number of weaponthanes being low or your war magic being innefective because you haven't raided for a while.

Second, what is the highest combat score on your ring (and is that leader around in fire season when you are being raided?). Anything below excellent and you will have a lot of trouble winning fights in my experience, and getting someone who is renowned is a real help (but you lost your best fighter in a heroquest I think you said?)

Third, how much sacred times magic are you dedicating to war? The max is influenced by your clan type and whether or not you have a war god on the ring, but more importantly what are you actually spending? This is probably not the place to skimp on your magic allocation. If you can only assign one point of war magic you might want to keep a couple set aside to assign when battles happen.

Fourth, what war blessings, if any, do you have in place? Remember knowing the blessing isn't enough, you have to have it locked in by a shrine or temple, or else sacrifice for it each year. The rock in the middle of your war screen will tell you which blessings are active.

Fifth, what treasures, if any, do you have for war (besides the earth shakers, obviously)?

Sixth, how many of your people are you getting to battle? When attacking you probably need to bring along extra carls beyond the default (they won't be happy about it, but they'll be less happy if you lose all your battles). I typically increase the default by half, going from half the available fyrd to three-quarters. I've not seen any negative side effects, aside from occasionally unhappy farmers. On defense are your patrols spotting the attackers? If not, make sure that you have a watch-tower built, strong outer patrols (I usually have a little under half my thanes on outer patrol), and as many hunters as you can support (recruit more cottars if you don't have enough people to support all of those hunters).

Of course, you can do everything perfectly, and when you get the three consecutive raids--especially if you lose badly in the first battle--you can just get pummelled. I have had clans suffer so badly in the first year or two that I thought they had very little chance of surviving, and re-loaded and started the year over again.

I hope this helps a bit!

--Bryan



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