Advice

Fred’s Tips

By Fred Bradbury

 

Soldier Transfer Orders

Did you know that there is an easy way for you to make sure that your CRITICAL T2 soldier transfer orders worked when you are writing your turn? 

Example: 

Let’s say Brad knows what force you are using for your army because Bruce told him… Evil Bruce! 

So it’s time for you to change forces, and while you’ve turned “LPE tracking on”, you were merging soldiers from several different forces and are worried that tracking didn’t catch them all… It’s happened to you before. Something went wrong with a transfer and the LPE never gave you an indication with a yellow highlighted order… 

Solution: 

You can use the Re-Equip Soldier order T16 to see if your transfers were successful with 20 seconds of work. Normally (when merging armies) I do all of my transfers in an excel spreadsheet to make sure my quantities and levels are correct. So I know what my ENDING AMOUNTS should be…. 

The LPE tracks almost all T2 orders correctly. The two errors I have seen it make are when you are transfering INTO or OUT of the SAME slot on the SAME order. In these two cases there is a logic error in the LPE with the SECOND HALF of the transfer order. The error is that LPE doesn’t track the quantity being transferred in the second half of the order… 

What you are going to do is use the T16 order to temporarily (and quite quickly) re-equip each slot in the army with a single order. You will be using the LPE’s tracking to see “how many weapons are used” to determine how many soldiers the LPE believes are ACTUALLY IN the slot. 

This method assumes you avoid the two logic errors in T2 orders that I mention above… 

Here’s how to do the check… 

  1. Make all of your soldier transfers
  2. Turn Tracking on
  3. After the last transfer, enter a T16 Re-Equip slot order (you will eventually
  4. delete this order after you’ve checked all the slots>
  5. Pick slot 1
  6. GO NEXT
  7. Choose a weapon.
  8. on the lower right section of the window you will see “HAVE” with a number,
  9. this is the amount of the weapons you have in the army for whatever weapon you
  10. selected, it makes no difference which weapon you select. You will then see a
  11. “NEED” with a number, this is the QUANTITY of soldiers the LPE believes are in
  12. the slot after all your transfers are complete 
  13. compare the quantity in the “weapons NEEDED” with what you think is supposed
  14. to be in the slot
  15. If it’s correct, Click PREV
  16. Select Slot 2
  17. *rinse and repeat*
  18. Delete the order so you don’t accidentally re-equip a slot before your big
  19. battle.

 

If the quantity is incorrect, you’ve got a cascading error somewhere and you need to debug where by rechecking your orders one by one. 

In about 20 seconds you can use this method to check what the LPE believes is there vs. what you think is there using a single order, then when you have that warm fuzzy that everything is correct, you can delete the T16 order. 

I’ve used this method numerous times to fix mistakes that were caused by a stupid cascade, or other type of mistake made previously in the turn which the LPE DID NOT warn me about…. 

Brad believes I have this mystical power of LUCK. It isn’t LUCK, it’s just attention to detail and knowing how to work “around the limitations” of the LPW and use “the features we have” within the LPE to write your turn. 

Is the LPE archaic? sure 

Would it be nice to get a better system? absolutely 

Will we ever see one? we can hope 

In the meantime, can you use this tactic to write a better turn and make fewer mistakes? sure can! 

 

Production Secrets

Did you know that if you teach your population segments production secrets like Troll Hammers, Mithril Swords, Dwarven Axes, etc. that the Craftsmen in the population segment produce more crowns each per production cycle? 

Early in a game (when you are crown starved) and late in a game (when you are tradegood rich and/or have a lot of craftsmen) this can be a big deal. 

It only costs 1 character action. 

Is that extra scry force or extra S1/S2 practice order really worth more then an S15 (Teach Secret) order? 

From the Legends Rules: 

3.5.12 Production Secrets 

The secrets of creating certain items, such as Dwarven Plate or Elven Bows, may be known by Characters, and are then taught to Population Segments so that they can actually construct the items. Only Characters may teach these secrets, and then only to a Population Segment, not to another Character. 

From the Aayko Legends Economics 101 article on the HQ website: 

Craftsmen: 

Tradegoods Produced = Craftsmen assigned * (1+SEI/200) 

Crowns Produced = Craftsmen assigned * (1+SEI/200) * (5 + CB +SB) 

– with CB = a Crown Bonus for the presence of Guilds and Markets in the location, and for Production Secrets that the pop segm knows. How high the CB resulting from guilds actually is, remains unknown. Markets are said to add about +0.3 crowns. While Production Secrets are said to increase the crown production with +2 crowns per Secret. Note that these Crown Bonuses only applies to crafsmen, not to other tradesmen producing crowns. 

– with SB = the so called Synergistic Bonus; meaning that the crown output per craftsman is higher the more craftsmen there are present in the pop segm; it is due to benefits of co-operation. 

In Legends I, this SB was a strong reality, and said to begin after 50 craftsmen present. However, in Legends II (SOP and later modules), having large quantities of crasftmen will no longer increase the production significantly, and the bonus is in principle set to zero; however, due to some random factors and rounding effects, the SB is at best +1 crown (so a cap at 6 crowns basic craftsmen production). The CB is added later, and in Legends II the sum of positive effects from CB and SB together will be capped at +3, so that craftsmen can never make more than 8 crowns per person. 

A competitive job you can assign craftsmen to in a normal turn is Resource Conversion (T12). Note that each module will have Rare resources that can be converted with that order too (find out with Rune-research). 

 

Backup Character Orders

Always, Always, Always Issue “Backup Character orders” on your decent characters. 

How many times have you had a move plot fail, a teleport fail, etc. and as a result failed on a character action? Were you aware that when certain actions fail that your character’s action isn’t “used up”? 

If you are running a large (max cost turn) you are doing yourself a dis-service if you aren’t entering backup influence or backup S1/S2 orders on your decent characters. Just enter them in on the phase 2 character action phase. 

From Aayko’s article on the Legends Article Website: 

  1. The following orders do NOT take an action: 
  2. Trying to Escape (C10) when you are not a prisoner 
  3. Failure to do Public Works (S28) 
  4. Trying to Influence (D2) a character that you already own 
  5. Trying to Cast a spell (S8/9) you don’t have 
  6. Trying to Learn a spell (S13) from someone who doesn’t have it 
  7. Trying to Gift a Mark (S30) you do not have 
  8. Trying to Influence (D2) someone who is not in the same province 
  9. Failure to Train troops (T1) [because the town, that held the population or was supposed to receive the troops, was taken away by another player, or because the trainer didn’t have the spell to train the entered status, or because the trainer was not in the same prov as the force in which he was to train, or….etc. etc.] 

 

Drakes

Here is a piece of wisdom that some players may not realize… 

Herd Id’s are populated in order, by row across the game map when the GM runs the database population program. This is an artifact of poor programming by the early legends programmers. In a perfect world, Herd ID’s would have random numbers for identifiers… 

For example, If you spot a Herd ID #338 in P 1/18 and then spot another herd ID in P 10/18 with Herd ID # 342, then you can deduce there are 3 other herds (assuming they haven’t been farmed by another player) in the intervening 8 provinces in row 18. 

You can use this bit of information to send scouts out to detect missing herds. 

This information can be valuable early in the game when you are scouring a section of Barren Hills for mammoths to slaughter for Ivory (for crowns early in the game) or when you are trying to discover drake herds in a section of mountain provinces or moors provinces (so you can reach critical mass to begin blessing them). 

Enjoy, 

Fred