I have played the game 5-6 times now, and I still don't seem to get when it's best to play my Harvest orders or how often. It's definitely not good to play them in summer as there's 50 % chance that they will be overruled in autumn. What is your tactic with harvest orders, and when do you play them? My first year of play is usually something like mobilize-conquer-harvest-recruit if neither famine or bountiful harvest comes up in autumn. If either of those come up it's usually mobilize-conquer-recruit-rally support/acquire power (or maybe fortify). Let's get a discussion going on the strategy of using harvest orders.

Grandmaster said:

Well, the odds of it being "overruled" in autumn is only 25%; there are only 2 Bountiful Harvests. The other 6 won't override them:

- 2 Famines; in fact, with these, you WANT to Harvest in Summer, because you won't be able to in Fall (which could be devestating for Winter). Since you just Harvested, you won't be hurt by a Famine, unless you used a Resource development to boost one of your resources.

- 1 Frozen Crops; this slightly decreases your food, but doesn't completely override the whole Harvest.

- 2 Revealing their True Nature and 1 Threatened Home Realms, which have no effect on Harvests at all.

That being said, I think the best times to use Harvest are situations where you'd net yourself at least 4 resources. This can come from conquering new areas, or from reductions due to game events or Fortify orders. However, in a typical game, Harvest only usually happens once or twice. In a longer epic game, you might get in 3. Thus, generally, I've found the developments to not be worth it in many cases, except for the defensive ones; save yourself the wood.

When to use it depends on the map setup and where you are. If you can take 2-3 areas early on in Year 1, you'll probably want to Harvest in the Fall, unless either Famine (which prevents it) or Bountiful Harvest (which makes it unneccessary) come up. Thus, it's generally a good idea to use your Spring and Summer of year 1 taking areas. If you have empty areas next to your home realm, use Strategize in Spring to take them, then a Mobilize in Summer to try and take 1 or 2 more. The trick is you only start with 4 units, so unless Spring Year 1's card is a New Recruits, you may not be able to take more than 2 areas. But if you can afford to spread your troops out to take a 3rd area (or 4th, if you are lucky), it may be worth it to get the resources. A good Year 1 harvest can really be useful if Year 2's spring is New Recruits, also - it gives you more forces to work with.

If you don't harvest in Year 1, you'll probably want to harvest in Year 2; this is a situation where you MIGHT consider harvesting in Summer, so that you can spend Fall and Winter recruiting and reinforcing your other areas. Sure, there's a 25% chance Bountiful Harvest may come up in fall and making your Summer harvest useless, but I think that can be worth the risk. After the first harvest, you probably won't harvest again unless you get a lot more territory and want to get better recruiting options, OR you have lost resources and want to recover them.

In all, I think that the proper use of Harvest can often be the key to winning and losing. Early on, I'd use harvest TOO much, gaining only a 1-3 resource each time. This wasted a bunch of orders, which my brother capitalized on to beat me, as he could more easily outmaneuver me with more.

Anyway, one last bit - I don't play with House Rules much, but one minor rule we tend to use in our group is a slight modification to Bountiful Harvest: The use of it is optional (which means that you don't have to let it hurt you), and the Bountiful Harvest also lets you collect on EXISTING developments (making them more worthwhile, especially if you build them early). Not NEEDED to make the game work, but I've found this minor mod helps make it better.

I guess in a normal scenario there will not be a New Recruits event during spring, so with your starting units you will be most likely to get one good area with 2 food or wood and one empty area with 1 food, wood or ore with 1 mobilize order. If you are humans or elves you could possibly use 2-3 influence on diplomacy in one of the really good areas (the 2 giants 3 ore area comes to mind). Then it would be very tempting to harvest in summer, recruit in autumn and maybe fortify in winter, but a bountiful harvest would mean that you wasted an order during summer.

If on the other hand you only manage to secure one area I guess it would make sense skipping harvesting altogether the first year.

Grandmaster said:

It won't be every time, but there are 2 New Recruits, so that means in about 25% of the games, New Recruits will appear in Spring of Year 1. Not something to bank on, but it can change the early-game "what to do next" stuff.

Still, while Bountiful Harvest can waste a Summer recruit, it's again important to remember that's only going to happen 25% of the time, so it COULD be worth it; wasting a first-year order usually isn't as drastic since most first-year orders only have minor effect (relative to later) anyway.

It all just depends on what you get. It's hard to state a hard-and-fast rule for when to harvest, but basically the two main things to consider are whether it will help you support more units (ie, Food), or whether you'll get more units during a recruit. For me, the Influence and Tactics changes on the dials are secondary - the units are what I go on to decide if harvesting is worthwhile most of the time. If I only get one or two units, it may not be. If it gets me 3 or more new units, then it's more likely worth it.