I picked up this game during the luck of the Irish sale. Normally strategy games aren't my strong suit but I decided to give this one a try.

I'm enjoying the game so far. I was able to win the first training battle. However, I could use some tips from more experienced players. I'm not doing well in the barricade training battle.

I didn't realize how much depth there was to this game.

What do you recommend to someone who is just starting out with this game?

Thank you in advance for your answers.

DF1871 posted a nice starterguide for Conquistador here:
http://www.gog.com/forum/expeditions_conquistador/starterguide_for_conqistador

In addition to the starter tips from DF1871's thread, note that the game always continues even if you fail a mission.

You always get the experience points whether you win or lose, and you get to pick new guys when you leave Hispaniola for the mainland.

If you're struggling, I'd suggest just trying things out (including the tips mentioned above) for your first game, see what works for you, then restart when you have a better idea of how things go.

- During tactical battles, defensive positions and chokepoints are your friends. Use the battlefield and barricades to create zones where the enemy will be forced to come one or 2 at a time against your full power. Or where you will hold the gap with 2 strong melée fighters, while the rest are healing/sniping/boosting. With this, I managed to win every single battle in the Hispagnola campaign. It is so efficient that I must force myself to play aggressively sometimes, otherwise I would only defend/counterattack and it would become dull quick.

- Fire is a dangerous friend, but it can be devastating, especially when applied to a chokepoint that your enemies have to cross

- In general, take advantage of the terrain (even if it means running behind a cover for the first round), and use the barricades/traps/lanterns to model it to your advantage.

- The scout is powerful, but flimsy. Good to make a flanking attack, or to kill a medic, but if he gets isolated in the middle of the enemy, he WILL go down. I try to use him to take down an enemy quickly, then I advance to protect him.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I read through the starter guide and it helped a bit.

Currently what I find most tedious is running out of rations while navigating the world map.

Do you have any suggestions on managing rations?

Most importantly, whenever you see those wild boars (marked in red roaming around), hunt them down! You can get a lot of food from those.

Secondly, there are areas near water where you can fish (you'll see fish swimming around in circles in the water). Camp near there and you should get an option to assign one of your guys to fish. If you both hunt and fish you can sometimes get a significant boost to your food reserves. You can camp there multiple days in a row if you want to build up your supply.

Thirdly, a high hunting skill for your main character plus at least two hunters (or people with decent hunting skill) helps a lot. It's often worth getting your doctors (and possibly your scholars) upgraded with some hunting skill and getting them to hunt (or preserve) whenever you can, since they don't need to heal/herbalise/build all the time. Herbalising in particular can wait unless you're low on medicine since herbs don't expire.

If you don't have a high hunting skill and/or not enough decent hunters then managing rations becomes a lot more challenging. If you don't get enough rations while camping about the map, then apart from killing wild boars and fishing the only other option is to make sure you buy enough rations - which naturally eats into your profits.

Finally - especially if you're not getting enough food just from hunting during camping - also try to pick up lots of herbs. If you're medical skills are decent and you have some doctors, you should be able to collect enough herbs to turn them into way more medicine than you're likely to need. The excess can be sold or exchanged for food, minimising the amount of treasure you need to spend on this.

You kill them on the map, buy walking to them.

They are killed on the world map, but you preserve their meat in the camp menu.

Thank you both for clarifying that. I haven't had much time to play Expeditions lately. However, I'm planning on starting over this weekend.

I'd appreciate some feedback on my current character. I was trying to creating someone who could make peace but also fight when needed. I have listed my stats below.

7 Tactics
7 Diplomacy
5 Healing
6 Survival
4 Scouting
9 Leadership

I took 2 Doctors, 2 Hunters, 1 Scholar, 2 Scouts, and 3 Soldiers. I also picked up Yruenes which brings my soldier total to four.

Factoring in the followers I brought. my stats are:

15 Tactics
9 Diplomacy
9 Healing
10 Survival
8 Scouting
9 Leadership

Thank you in advance for your answers.

Nothing wrong with the people you brought with you, I think that's the most common troop makeup. I tend to choose only one Doctor, but that's because I'm a masochist. ;)

The main thing you need to know is that in addition to helping out in general gameplay (e.g. during camping, combat, etc.), every now and then the game does a check for these values. These checks are always in dialog options, which typically tend to indicate the skill being checked for. Usually these checks will use your total skills, but there are some locations where your character's personal skill is used (though these are much rarer).

This might be semi-spoilerish, so be warned:

From memory, I think your total diplomacy should be enough for most diplomatic options. I seem to recall values of 8 being typical for when checks are made against your character in most cases, though some might be 9 (for the tactics skill I definitely had more options with a 9 than with 8).

Note that diplomacy is also used in haggling (I think that uses totals) and "scholar-type" things - you'll see what I mean as you play the game, I don't want to spoil these. You'll easily be able to do all of those "scholar-type" things with the setup you have though, even if you don't up diplomacy (I think). But if you're playing a more diplomatic style, definitely have that upped - the money you save from haggling and the like will be worth it, since you won't be raiding and pillaging for treasure so you'll need to save money somewhere.

I know that diplomacy is sometimes (but not always) an option instead of scouting, so low scouting shouldn't be a major drawback in your case (and you'd need it really high to use it instead of diplomacy in those cases from memory).

I'd keep tactics at 7 since you're new to the game, and a 7 won't limit your items (or their range) in battle that much, and with your soldiers you'll be able to access most tactical text options at that level. You might have trouble intimidating people, but you're playing diplomatically so surely you aren't going to do that are you? :)

The only suggestion for changes, since you want to play diplomatically, is to up your diplomacy to at least 8 or even 9. What you trade these in for is dependent on many factors, as they all have drawbacks. Personally I'd reduce healing, since herbs are plentiful and you have two doctors to herbalise with - so unless you suffer mass casualties every single battle you probably won't run out. I played on the hardest level with two doctors and still had plenty of meds (even sold some most village visits), and I think my Healing was at 3 or maybe even 2. Well there was one hairy event, but that was due to a choice I made - I'm sure a diplomat won't make that choice... ;)

Thanks for the tips.

I didn't choose any characters with racist tendencies to complement the diplomatic style I plan on using. I might go for intimidation if I thought it wouldn't hurt my reputation too much.

Should I empty my treasury and try and max out the weapons and armor of my followers?

I thought about making healing lower but I was trying to not make my stats too lopsided.

Well the final stats are up to you - the game will play differently with different stats, so the best advice is to just go ahead and experiment!

While equipment is important, I wouldn't empty my treasury to buy it as much as possible. I personally do tend to buy armor from shops quite often, but only a few items each visit and then ideally from places where it's not too expensive. Or if I have surplus medicine then I trade that in for armor + treasure. The reason for this is that, as you'll notice, whenever you start to buy something the price goes up, so eventually it becomes much more expensive - so it's probably not economically viable to buy out the shop (in most cases).

You can get armor for free in a number of places too, including from battle victories, though like I said I like to supplement that.

Ultimately though it depends on how you're going, or how you think you'll fare, in the battles. More equipment definitely makes the battles easier.

Though the OP must now be ploughing through this incredibly entertaining (and for some reason, woefully underrated) game, there's one thing I should mention:

Lanterns.

Everyone will tell you to use them.

Everyone is correct - they make battles much easier.

BUT if you want a challenge - and aren't in the mood to laugh at the AI as he runs through the flames (!) - do the following:

- set your starting tactics to 3 (so you have a max of 2 of each item you bring with you)
- have only one starting Doctor (limiting how you can heal yourself after battles - and events)
- though I personally bumped up my "healing" to 8 to somewhat compensate
- leave your leadership at 5 (or drop it if you want to go further)
- set the game to the highest level with sudden death on
- and vow to NEVER USE LANTERNS throughout the entire playthrough.
- Also limiting the cannon to where it "makes sense"

It made a certain battle on Hispaniola extremely tense - yet I still managed to win. Just. With one death and a number of my best men out for a while. Nasty!

Made damn good use of those "perfect defense" and "guard" Soldier actions - if it weren't for those I would have been totally wiped out (and only one of my soldiers had "guard"). Good placement of my two barricades, two caltrops and two spike traps also helped a LOT (though this was made harder since the range of placement is MINISCULE when you only have a tactics of 3). Plus my Doctor did some patching during the battle, though he couldn't get to the guy I stupidly left out the front - I couldn't get to him in time. Actually I ended up with only one guy left standing by the final turn (my Doctor getting hit by some lucky shots two turns previously) - one more turn and the enemy would have won. Luckily they had a strict time-limit to beat us, so even with a number of hunters/trappers and soldiers and scouts having just trashed my last barricade and about to down my last soldier, they left defeated!