"Official" tips for new COSMOS Fantasy players

By Morten Larsen, the game designer

These tips are based on my experience with the many test games of "War of the Dark God". The COSMOS Fantasy game system is fairly complex and as a new player it can be quite difficult to realise all the implications of some of the game mechanisms. I therefore often see that new players omit important actions that have to be done from the very beginning, or that they overlook the consequences of other actions. I hope this document will help you to avoid the most common pitfalls.

There are also three player-contributed tips pages: One by Jeff Braunstein, one by Niels Lademark and one by Tommy Jensen, all COSMOS veterans from way back. I have tried not to duplicate too much what they have already written, but the most important points cannot be repeated too often.

Ensure battle tactics "flee" for your leaders

At the start of the game all your leaders will have battle tactics "flee" and in general this is the safest choice of tactics for any leader in military mode (with very few exceptions which you may realise when you get into the game). However, during the game leaders' battle tactics may be changed to "avoid" if they are forced to flee when at their home hex. Tactics "avoid" means that if they get involved in a batlle they will try to stay out of the fighting, but if your force is defeated or the enemy penetrate your lines your leader will fight, to the death. This means that your all-important, non-replaceable rulers may walk one hex, bump into a group of monsters and be promptly squished. The same goes for your heroes, knights and even scouts. So always check that your leaders have tactics "flee" and if not make sure to change it.

Use the "tactics" order to set the battle tactics of your leader to "flee".
Be certain that you only set "flee" tactics for your leader, not for any units that happen to be in his force. Use the "tactics" order as follows (for unit 3101):

3101:
tactics flee 3101
- or use it as a nation order to set tactics "flee" for all your leaders:
nation 1:
tactics flee 3101 3102 3103

Give all your leaders a "fleewhen" condition

A fleewhen condition has benefits even for leaders with tactics "flee", so in general it is always a good idea to set a fleewhen condition for every leader you own.

Use the "fleewhen" order to set a threshold for when your leaders should flee. Each leader should execute the "fleewhen" order as the very first thing in the first turn! A good threshold is about half the full number of wound points for the unit. Set the fleewhen condition for a leader (here 3101) as follows:

3101:
fleewhen 5

You can also use the "fleewhen" order as a nation order to set the same fleewhen threshold for a number of units simultaneously (or just to set the fleewhen condition for a leader without interrupting his current order):

nation 1:
fleewhen 5 3101 3102 3103
Be aware that the "fleewhen" condition once triggered is removed and you will have to set a new "fleewhen" threshold when the unit returns home.

With a properly set fleewhen condition you may sometimes wish to deviate from choosing tactics "flee" for a leader.

  1. For a questing character you almost always want "defend" as otherwise the character will flee from any monster encountered (and with tactics "avoid" he will not help his fellow party-members but only defend himself). But be sure to change tactics to "flee" again before leaving quest mode.
  2. If you have an army with few but strong troops and you are up against an army which has a total combat value much less than yours consisting of many weaker individuals, you may be outnumbered but nevertheless expect to win the battle. In this case set the tactics of your leaders to "avoid" as otherwise they may run off when the two armies first clash together and your few troops cannot keep all the enemies occupied. With "avoid" and a conservative "fleewhen" level your leaders will hang around for a bit, giving your troops a chance to reduce the enemy army to a size where it can be contained and your leaders are safe.

But as a general rule: Every turn, check that all your leaders have a fleewhen condition set and also have tactics flee, and make sure you set fleewhen and tactics for those who have not.

Keep an eye on your gold reserve

Your nation will usually get most of its gold from taxes, from city trade and from mines (if you have any). Tax income is proportional to your population pool (i.e. the population not in units) and mine income is proportional to the manpower available, which is again proportional to your population pool. So when you recruit new units and thereby reduce your population pool, your gold income will be reduced. On top of this the new units will usually also need to be paid in gold each turn, so it is very easy to go bankrupt by recruiting too many units. As a general rule, never recruit more units than your total upkeep can be paid by each turn's (reduced) gold production (this also goes for other resources, but their production is not reduced by the drain on your population pool and so they are usually less of a problem). Do not hesitate to disband units you do not need if their upkeep cannot be met.

Control more land

More land means higher resource production and a bigger population so control more land whenever you can, especially early in the game where there are many turns left to reap the benefits. This goes for all nations: Some nations have more need of land than others, but all nations benefit in different ways from expanding their territory.

Do not underestimate the time it takes to control a new hex. One full turn is usually the minimum, three turns not unheard of. Bring as many units as you can to reduce the required time, and plan ahead and control hexes in the order which will give you the maximum bonus from already owned neighbouring hexes for each control.

Use scouts

Most nations have "scout" units: cheap and usually fast units with good awareness. Use these on their own to scout ahead, but also include one in each major force as what the force sees is determined by the unit with the highest awareness in the force.

Some nations do not have cheap scout units. Rather than use expensive leaders or heroes to scout ahead it will usually be a better idea to recruit some minimum size mass units to take care of this function.