Hi Imperium,

Yes, absolutely! It's not an uncommon tactic, to attack one player with armies from more than one ally! 

Once we meet our enemies and scouting are well advanced, we should definitely make more concrete plans!!
Since you are last, and I'm just before you, it would be nice to attack cbower together

I have a rookie question !

We have allies in this game, is it possible to attack an opponent with combined armies ? Supposing an ally positions his army next to an enemy army during his turn, what happens if I attack the enemy army during my turn ? Do I get to use both my and my ally's armies against our common adversary ?

I have been reluctant to share this widely, because I understand some may be upset by it, and I build my game around TC. What I do before hard fights is I practice the fights. The fight is just a matter of getting the right site with the right defenders and putting together the right units levels and items. This is easily done with the map editor provided by Triumph. Below is a quick video showing just how easy it is to do. Sorry no audio on the video I had to do it from my desktop with no microphone.

How to Practice PBEM fights

You log into your PBEM game. You screenshot your units, the AI units, then save and exit. Then you load a simple editor map. You drop down the site, leaders, heroes, and items needed. Save and play. Now use the cheats to level you units or produce needed units or acquire needed spells. It literally only takes a few minutes to setup once you know what you are doing.

Now you can feel free to experiment with the battle, try different strategies, push your boundaries. Explore what can be done and what can't. Study your notes, then when your ready jump back into the PBEM game to try the real thing. See the thing is, if your only practice on TC fights comes from PBEM games, your going to be too reluctant to push your boundaries. This gives you a safe environment to really challenge yourself and learn. After a while you need it less and less, but it is a handy resource.

Some may say this is to similar to save scumming, but I would argue this is different. The actual fight is it's own thing, you do not know if they will guard or attack, you don't about webs, you don't know about converts, there is plenty of chance still. Also it takes time, health is a hard factor to manage. Still you can learn some of the dances, which gives you the ability to plot your strategy and moves in advance. I think of it like a professional sports player rehearsing game situations over and over, so when the real thing comes they can execute.

Since I will be using these terms to describe tactical I thought I should define what I mean by them for clarity. Also I wanted to just outline some concepts and considerations.


terms:
Split - what I mean bye split is taking a unit(s) away from your main force to draw aggression from the AI. 

Blocking - This is where you position a unit one full move from the AI but still within reach of damage without given the AI any other targets for melee that round. The AI always takes the damage. Your unit is in a defensive position waiting to get hit. The purpose is usually to position the blocker in the path of a tough target to take that target the first punch. This allows you to use flanks on your next turn and remove the unit quickly.

Positioning - Battle position is different then splitting and blocking. Splitting and Blocking are part of positioning but they are simple and straight forward. Positioning covers a wide variety of tricks to get the AI to move or act base on the movement of your units. For example dividing you team into two groups of 3 vs phantoms and wisps. Moving them together towards the center but separated by enough hexes that the warriors can't hit either but close enough they each remain a target. The wisp phase in and often if done right the Phantasm move and guard towards the center to keep both options available. You have split the wisps because you draw their aggressive, but you positioned the phantasm by forcing the hedge move. Then you can pull back on the wisps and kill them by range keep your distance. Once the distance between your two parties is large enough the Phantasms will choose a side and it will be a split again.

Split Sacrifice - This is another positioning move, it is often good to have low health disposable units. The AI prioritizes kills. You can use these disposable units to ensure dangerous targets split when and where you need them to by giving the AI a sure kill only available to your target.

AP Draining - any action you take that is more about reducing an AI unit's action points then doing damage.

Initiation -  When The AI is in defense mode you need to perform an action to get them to be aggressive. This action ideally should not be a melee action of you own. It should be a trigger set only after you have decided on positioning using splits, obstacles and so forth. Can be a damage spell or any ability. Damage spells often result in aggression after one action. Non-Damage spells and abilities often take two turns. Long range abilities are best here. Throw chicken is good, throw curse can work if your patient, berserks are good, and so on.

topics:

Site Matchup - This is the pre-combat analysis on how your strengths and weakness match the AI. Certain sites are better or worse for different classes. Sometimes matches are obvious and sometimes not. This is an area where I beleive one is always learning new things. For instance Vaults, are easy for Halfling Warlords, and terrible for Tigran warlords, tigran are more melee focus and have low resistance. They easy get shocked to death. Adventurers  range is much better then Cheetah's versus the static shield. Adventurers also have animal and monster slay vs baby shock serpents, and Beholder. The Phantasms are a problem for both. I think the ability to understand the pre-fight matchup is very important part of the tactical game. You should have a general idea on how to approach the site.

Combat Spells - Whether to use or not use combat spells depends on so many factors. Their impact on tactical cannot be overstated. Spells can have a huge impact but you almost never need to research high tier combat spells. The question is more about when and where to use you casting points. This is where you need to understand you matchup and whether you need them or don't. Also you need to consider your overall strategy. I often will use spells because I like combat and build through it, but it comes at a cost usually of being able to scout. It is one of the reasons why you will often not find me scouting very well, because I invest heavily in combat success.

Battles Approach - The biggest issue I think that faces new players is XP and health. New players want to win the battle and save health. I will often trade health/units for XP. More experienced players will look at the fight as a way to gain XP. This is what allows us to grow, and also foolishly loose are leaders. You are not playing at truly high level until you have experienced losing you leader trying to grab a few more XP, either lost to a critical or a small mistake. It is gut wrenching, but it is that ability to keep putting yourself out there and pushing your boundaries that leads to growth. At some point you will fail in an embarrassing way, you need to accept that and keep getting back up. There are lots of way to manage health, don't be afraid to use it as a resource. Just use healing or unit rotation to cover. How aggressive to be in gaining XP and other battle bonuses is a struggle everyone faces. There is such a thing as trying to go to far too fast. Each person needs to find their sweet spot, it depends on your overall strategy and other factors. I do believe though that playing it too safe in the long run is a sure way to get beat though.

Good tips and tricks CB!
Another trick I was on the wrong end off in a previous game is to allow one player to buy all vassals, it will be very expensive, but if other players help it's very doable.
This player will then end up with "pure good" alignment very, very quick.
50*8 (8 vassals) give you 400 alignment, and you are almost there with 8 vassals. During this time you should also be able to clear a few easy sites and "let them surrender" which will give you the last piece to complete the empire quest.

Just some fun facts and tips that have come up.

Necro always start with a Necro hero, this is a change triumph made awhile back. Necro's always start with a t3 on normal or better starting positions. Necro's have a strength bonus to their starting stack.

Get the most out of the Diplomacy screen. If you have peace with another player you can always see their gold and mana resources. Just open the diplomacy menu and demand from you ally an obscene amount (like 90000) of gold, gold per turn, mana, and mana per turn. It will fill the offer box with their maximum they have / or they are making. This gives you the ability to always see how well or poorly your friends are doing, and always you to ask or give funds that make sense.

In the diplo screen when you are on a player there is a tab that says who they have made contact with. You can see if they have made contact with anyone you have met. This can give you an idea of what your opponents know of the map. If it is later in the game and they haven't made contact with that vassal in the north east corner, it looks safe to absorb that guy.

Always watch the updates on players alignment, this gives you information about their expansions. How many times they buy peace, how many vassals.

Remember there is a treaties tab, if you give 20 gold per turn to help a friend out, it's not gone forever. Times get tough click on the player and then the treaties tab and remove the treaties. Also be aware when making treaties on a per turn basis, players can cancel that at anytime, so communicate well.

Being killed by those damn pesky Rogue strategic spells! Release those cities as vassals and it will remove the strategic spells. It is much more cost efficient then trying to disjunct. So as long as it is not a production site just release it. You can buy it back and even get some nice tributes and quests, and since you owned it and released it it should have the best relation which means you get 80% of it resources, which is much more then what you get when hit by multiple spells.

ok That is all I can think of for today.