Helpful Hints

Glipster's Picks

• Gold
  
• Noble Points
  
• Fear, Contract or Oath
  
• General tips and advice
  
• How do I?
  

Money..er... Gold. "How do I get it?" Lots of ways, some much more effective than others.
1) Running a trade route. This late in the game, finding a vacant route may be a chore. You also have to worry about crossing borders or entering a war zone by mistake.
2) Operating a mine. Once a mine reaches a certain depth, you can do well at mining gold (varies between 500 and 50 gold a turn depending on depth.)
3) A priest "owning" a temple at the end of a turn gains 100 gold.
4) A noble "owning" an Inn at the end of the turn gains a varying amount of gold.
5) Questing. A bit dangerous, but usually worth the risk and up front expenses.
6) Doing grunt work for an alliance. Many alliances would welcome the help. This does make
you a target for any enemies that alliance might have.
7) Making baskets, just what every noble wanted to do when they grew up.
8) Stacking with a city garrison. Very usefull if all you are doing is using the time to study.
9) A mage using the "802" spell can bring in a tidy sum each turn. Don't forget, multiple mages casting 802 end up competing for the sam sum of gold.

There are a couple things you can do to conserve cash. Only learn the skills at first that you
need or are going to use soon. And convert your nobles from Contract to Fear or Oathed status.

Noble Points. "What should I spend them on?" Up to you, preplan what direction you want your
faction to take. Some factions are magic intensive, others go for beastmasters. Some want to
explore and quest. Some go for a combination of all and some go for just a few Oathed nobles.
So like I said, Preplan what you want to do. I think every faction should have a Mage, Beastmaster
and a Priest but that's just me.

To Fear, Contract or Oath. To save money, I suggest converting the loyalty of new nobles to Fear
loyalty or Oath them. If you want to conserve on your noble points as well, go for the Fear and beat
the livin' tar outta the little guy. I know this seems harsh, we even had debates about it being
contrary to the Musketeer code, but for game play, it is the only way to go.

General Tips and advice. Congratulations! You've just entered a war zone! Before stepping one foot
out of that safe haven, contact the local controlling alliance. Make sure they understand you are a new
Neutral player with no ill will towards them. Sorry, it's not right that you should have to do that, but
to preserve that neck of yours, it's required. More than once, someone has shot first and didn't stop afterwards
to ask questions. Don't think you're safe on the waterways either. Play it safe to start.

As I said before, at the start, just learn a few required skills. Speaking of skills, have all of your nobles learn
610, 611, 630 and 641 as soon as you can. Those should be four standard skills for almost every noble in Olympia.
If you are going to invest alot of time and money on a noble learning skills, better take the time and noble points to
bring that noble up to a Oath 2 rank. There is nothing more frustrating than losing one of your best nobles to a
concealed spy hellbent on causing you pain.

Before raising (razing to for that matter) any structures, you better check with that local controlling alliance we were
talking about earlier. Most alliances like to know what is going on in their territory. Some wont care and will be
glad to have you there, others might. Also check around before assuming buildings have been vacated by their owners.

How do I? I'll try to use this section to address questions posed by new players. Hey! Lets face it. It's the new players that keep things intresting. Lets do all we can to help them out.

Question - How do I get stuff? Answer - depending on what you need, there is more than likely a skill required and in some cases, a particular type of 'troop' unit required.
From the rules:

The 'chance' is the percentage chance per day of success. 'Alias' is the alternate order you can issue, instead of say "collect 68", you can say "yew" instead.