Olympia TAG: The Newbie Scrolls

Originally written for an open-ended TAG game in 2000, but much of it still applies to the new games. It will (probably) eventually be updated to reflect the current suite of games, but for now most of the information is probably still useful.

The Newbie Scrolls: Olympia TAG Game#4 - The Neverending Kingdom

Greetings, new faction! We hope your stay in the Neverending Kingdom will be a pleasant one. These scrolls were written to help you sort through the most important items in the rules, since reading and understanding all of them can be quite a chore for someone who is setting foot in the world for the first time.

For players of previous versions of Olympia (G2, for instance), there are quite a few changes that you should become familiar with as well, such as the combat system and religions.

The world is quite large, and there are many things that you can do and goals that you can set for yourself. So, have fun and good luck!

Valen

1) Introduction

1.1) Expectations and Goals

Since The Neverending Kingdom is an open-ended game, you are able to set your own goals. These could include, but are certainly not limited to:

Exploration of the world (in turn#95, there was still a significant chunk of the world that had not yet been explored)
Controlling land: setting up your own little duchy, or teaming with other players to control a vast empire
Becoming a high priest of one of the eight religions
Developing a powerful arch-mage
Finding and running trade routes between cities: becoming a wealthy merchant
Dealing in information and shady business: controlling a cadre of spies and assassins
Controlling mercenaries: selling your services to other factions and alliances
Sailing the high seas: using your navy to control the shipping lanes, or assist traders and other travelers (for a fee, of course!)

and any number of other things! Be careful not to spread your faction too thin at first, however. Pick a couple of things you can do really well (and that will make money to support your faction), and then spread out as you gain more nobles in your faction.

1.2) Starting locations

There are no GM-enforced "safe havens" in The Neverending Kingdom, as in earlier versions of Olympia. Your nobles are fair game no matter where they start. Fortunately, as of turn#95, most places are peaceful, and some alliances or factions are protective of new players on general principle. You have three options of how to choose your starting location:

Greyfell [an1b] -- Greyfell is in the "Neuehaven" safe starting zone. All basic skills and some others are available for teaching. This in itself is a huge benefit! Greyfell is also on the edge of the vast wilderness known as the Wildlands, as well as being near a long coastline, so that makes it very nice for a starting location. Check the last few issues of The Gods Speak for more information.
Imperial City [aa0b] (default) -- you will start out here if you don't specify anyplace on your signup. It used to be a very busy city, but all of the land around it has been claimed and worked over. You may want to consider Greyfell [an1b] as a better alternative. Imperial City teaches Combat [1100], and there are guilds for most skill schools located in the city (you will need an escort to enter them at first).
A starting city specified by the city ID number. You will need to check with the current players to find a good starting city by this method. If you are interested in exploration, you should probably choose this method to find a city on the edge of the explored territories. Otherwise, try to find a city that is home to a welcoming faction who is willing to teach your nobles some of the basic skills or escort them into the guildhalls where they can learn on their own.
A random city, controlled by some faction. This will start your first noble in a totally random city that could be controlled by anyone. The city must be attached to a castle (via a garrison) in order to start there, so you may be an unwelcome guest before you are even able to establish yourself. It will not let you start in a city that has not yet been explored and garrisoned. Additionally, you might end up in a city with no other occupants (except for the garrison outside), and that doesn't teach any skills (most cities don't)! A bad situation indeed. Unless you are really adventurous, you should probably go with one of the first two options.

2) Your nobles

The primary vehicles through which you achieve your goals are your nobles (the characters your control in the game). You start off with one noble, and 12 "noble points" (NPs). NPs can be used to form (or "buy") new nobles, to increase the loyalty of existing nobles (see "loyalty", or to learn special advanced skills (religion, magic, and heroism).

Nobles are like the featured actors in a movie -- they are the ones we are really interested in, the heroes and heroines of Olympia. They can hire men, control beasts, and carry out complex orders. These other people or creatures are more like the "extras" in a movie. You cannot issue orders to them, but you instead control them through the whims of your noble characters.

Your first turn, you will want to form 3-4 new nobles at a cost of 1 NP each. Save some of your NPs for later -- you will be glad that you did. You receive 1 new NP every 8 turns. In TAG, you do not receive any NP back if a noble is killed (unlike Oly 2).

2.1) Nobles: Loyalty

Nobles are not automatically guaranteed to be yours forever. They may have their own motivations to leave your service, unless you pay them well, make them afraid to leave, or oath them to your faction permanently.

You will only want to use "oath" loyalty on your most important nobles, since it will cost you 1 or 2 NP. Fear or contract loyalty is appropriate for most resource-gatherer-type nobles. These types of loyalty are enforced with the honor and terrorize commands. Here is a comparison of these two loyalty types:

Contract:

pros:

your noble cannot be bribed with a paltry 250 gold
the noble can still terrorize other nobles
no chance of illness due to being terrorized

cons:

costs 50 gold/noble/month to maintain
if someone really wants to bribe the noble, they usually can offer more than the contract has honored them

Fear:

pros:

no cost to maintain
if terrorized by a priest they are dedicated to, they can be healed immediately, stopping infections and allowing many months of service before having to be terrorized again

cons:

if they don't have a healing potion and aren't with a priest when terrorized, then there is a chance they can catch an infection. Once they have an infection, they can die fairly easily, even in an inn.
can be bribed with a paltry 250 gold
For G2 players: Survive Fatal Wound is now a Heroism guild skill, and therefore costs 1 NP to learn. You cannot use the "infinite terror" tactic from G2 to kill a noble and have him recover from the wound with "fear-100" loyalty (except Heroes, of course; thanks to Corum of Tanelorn for the tip)
there is something of a moral issue here :-)

When you start out, you won't need to worry about this for about 10 turns, but keep it in mind. You don't want to have to oath all of your nobles right away if you are running low on your starting cash, so another possibility is to use low levels of terror (say 5-10%) and make sure the noble is inside an inn to reduce the chances of infection.

2.2) Nobles: Noble Points

As mentioned before, Noble Points can be used to create nobles and to learn special skills. If you want to learn very many special skills, you need to save your NPs, since you only get one new one every 8 turns. NP costs for different noble types are:

resource gatherer (wood/mining/horses/etc): 1 NP
combat leader versus monsters: 1 NP
combat leader versus other players: 2 NP (oath-1; 3 NP if oath-2)
castle sitter: 2-3 NP (oath-1 or preferably oath-2)
Hero: 2 NP (3 if oath-1)
Priest: 3-4 NP (oath-1; 4 NP if requires "create holy symbol")
expendable minor mage: 2 NP (knows 1 skill, like Gatecraft, with a narrow focus)
non-expendable minor mage: 5 NP (oath-1; necromancy; transcend death; one other skill; 6 NP for a 3rd magic skill)
master magician: 10 NP (oath-1; 5 magic schools; 2-NP "penalty" for exceeding 3 skills; transcend death)

If you are up against a really clever opponent, you may want to oath-2 your castle-sitter and combat leaders, so they won't fall victim to "persuade oathbound noble" (note that this has a 10% chance of success each week it is used, rather than a 2% chance as in earlier Olympias). Remember that in TNK the bribing faction has to pay the NP cost of any nobles they bribe, so most of your high-NP nobles should be safe from bribery and persuasion attempts unless your enemy has stored up a large amount of NPs (not likely, but possible).

Noble Points are your most precious resource, so be sure to protect them! All non-mage nobles should be dedicated to a priest before doing anything too hazardous. This will allow the noble to be resurrected in case
of death. Remember, though, that you only have 12 turns to get a dead body to the priest in a temple, or your noble will be lost forever. Mages should learn the Necromancy subskill Transcend Death to keep from permanently dying, since they cannot be dedicated to a priest.

3) Some first steps

So, you have formed some nobles, now what do you do?

One of the first things you need to do is to establish some sources of income. Don't squander that first 5000 gold, but use it to learn the skills that you will need to survive. There is a tips page for making money and another one for some general advice that you should read.

3.1) Skills

You should learn some, but not necessarily all, of the basic skills. You will probably start with enough Study Points to learn 2-3 of the basic skill categories. These allow you a certain number of days of study that will not require a teacher. (WARNING: Don't have the same noble use them for more than a week each turn, as the second week of study isn't as productive as the first!) Note that magic, religion, alchemy, heroism, persuasion, and stealth skills cannot be learned with study points.

Some cities teach basic skills (for instance, Imperial City [aa0b] teaches Combat in the city proper). Also, be sure to ask around to see if anyone can help teach your new nobles. Explain that you are a new faction just setting foot in the world, and most established players will be glad to teach you at least some of the basic skills. Guilds also teach skills, but you will have to be escorted inside by a guildmaster. Watch to see if anyone enters the guild tower, and they are a likely candidate to escort your nobles in, if you ask nicely. Trade guilds are found in almost every city, while Shipcraft and Combat guilds are probably the next most popular.

3.2) What to learn?

So many skills, so little time (and money!) You should only learn the most necessary skills to start off with, or you will soon go bankrupt. Since study becomes less effective after the first week you study each month, consider only studying 1-2 weeks each month and then doing something else. Remember that each new skill category or subskill that you learn will cost 100 gold.

Here is an overview of the non-Magic, non-Religion categories and which will be most useful to you starting out:

Combat: The most basic survival skill. If you are leaving the city, an armed escort is a must. Most useful subskills:

Instill Combat Discipline: although skirmishers (3,3,0) may seem more cost-effective that soldiers (5,5,0) since they cost half as much to maintain, they tend to run away in battle. ICD will allow you to train soldiers that can be turned into better troops such as pikemen and light crossbowmen.
Weaponsmithing: allows you to make crossbows and pikes, among other things. A must if you want pikemen and lgt xbowmen.

You can get by with just these two skills starting out, assuming that the only military threat is from monsters and not from other players. If you are attacking monsters, though, you will need to be more prepared:

Fight to the Death: this skill will allow you to decide when to quit fighting. By default, your side will give up when 50% of it's strength (total offensive+defensive values) has been depleted. This skill allows you to manipulate the "we give up" percentage to as low as 0%. In this case, your side will fight until all the soldiers are dead and all the nobles have suffered a wound. The downside of FttD is that your force may be much smaller than the enemy after the battle, which will greatly increase your chance of being captured if you lose. Note that monster stacks always fight to the death.
Control Men in Battle: allows you to control more men in a fight. If you attack, you can control (10+CMIB) men. If you are attacked, you can control (30+CMIB) men. Needless to say, you want to practice CMIB often if you want to command a bigger army.

Forestry: in order to make basic weapons, build ships, and build inns, you need wood. Some cities buy wood. Learn Harvest Wood. If you are in a city that buys some of the items that you can collect with Collect rare foliage then you may want to also learn that skill. Ignore the rest of the subskills for now.

Trading: training a trader is expensive (900 gold), but it is a very good way to make money to support your faction. The skills in themselves are not very useful for the most part (except for Build Wagons), but the important thing is access to the trading guilds.

Ranger: the horse skills are very useful, and Find Food in Wilderness can be used to reduce the cost of maintaining your exploration party. Riding horses can be used to make wagons (as well as to increase your speed), and some cities purchase wild horses.

Construction: since you receive a free tower in your "claim", you probably won't need to build anything early in your faction's life cycle. However, many smaller cities purchase stone, and so a noble who knows Stone quarrying many be a good investment if you are near a mountain or rocky hills.

Persuasion: this category has a few skills that might be useful to a beginning faction, if you can find a teacher for it. The "wild men" and "angry mob" skills give you a free fighting force. "Bribe noble" can be used to persuade refugees to join you, but it is not guaranteed to work and is therefore probably risky when you are low on money.

Shipcraft: This is an all-or-nothing proposition. Decide if you want to sail a ship. If so, learn all of the non-guild skills, then enter (or create) a guild and learn Navigate Deep Seas. Total cost for a guilded sea captain is 700 gold (+250 if you have to create the guild).

Stealth: this probably isn't very useful when you are starting out. Conceal Self is one of the best skills you can learn, but it will cost you 1000 gold and many months before you can even study it. Save this category for later.

Alchemy: though it is very useful to have a healing potion in the possession of each of your nobles, it can be an expensive chore to make them. Save this skill for later, and dedicate your nobles to a priest.

Mining: mines are a money pit. You won't find gold until they are fairly deep, and this requires a mining guild member and a ton of workers. Save this skill until you are making money and want to build things that require iron.

Heroism: a hero can be a fun character to play, and are potentially very useful for attacking monsters in locations with small entrances. However, they cost a lot of money to develop, so you probably want to save this skill for later.

4) Movement - getting around in the world

There are a number of ways to move around from place to place. Some are faster than others. Unless you really like to take your time getting from one place to the next, you will probably want to spend some time upgrading your movement capabilities. Be sure to read the rules on carrying capacity and travel. Some ways to get around include:

walking: this is your basic movement type, with times reported in your turn report.

riding: riding from one province to the next takes half as long as the reported time. Ways to achieve this include:

riding horses (carry 150 weight units each)
warmounts (carry 200 weight units each)
light wagons (carry 500 weight units each; but only move at walking speed in mountains)
war wagons (carry 900 weight units each; but only move at walking speed in mountains)
heavy wagons (carry 900 weight units each)

Warmounts are probably the most cost-effective way to move quickly for a new player who plans to go exploring through unknown terrain (and later you can use them to make knights and paladins, so they serve a dual purpose). If you are going for cheap and easy, then light wagons are the most efficient if you can tolerate the slow movement in the mountains. In the long run, you will probably want to build some heavy wagons (requires iron) and only use the light ones for short hauling duties.

sailing and ships: this is a relatively quick way to move around, and is a bit faster than riding. If you build a ship, be sure to invest in 3 sails for each hull to achieve maximum speed. I'm not convinced that there is a reason to ever build a ship with rowing ports. Typical sailing times between provinces for a fully equipped vessel are:

ocean to ocean: 4 days
ocean to/from land: 1 day
ocean to sea lane: 3 days (a sea lane is a well-known ocean path that allows speedy travel, and is marked as a 5-day ocean route rather than 6 days in your turn report)

flying: flying is a preferred way to travel across land and short ocean routes. Travel times between provinces are as follows:

land to land: 3 days
ocean to/from land: 2 days
to/from 1-day inner location: 1 day

WARNING: if your nobles spend more than 15 days flying over water, they will fall in and drown! Never use flying to explore new territory for this reason.

Some beasts are able to carry nobles while flying. The easiest to obtain are probably winged horses, which are often held captive by monster stacks in the wilderness and can be purchased in some mystical cities in other dimensions. Other flying beasts are much more difficult to obtain. Some Magical artifacts and spells exist that allow nobles to fly, and some of the more powerful priests are granted angels by their god as a reward for having many followers.

5) Basic Combat

It is a very good idea to understand the combat system before getting into too many fights. More than one noble has been lost due to misunderstandings about the way battles are resolved. Since the rules provide a good step-by-step explanation on the way combat works, we'll just provide some tips here.

When you first venture out into the wilderness, you should train a defensive force for protection of your nobles. These could be skirmishers or (preferably) soldiers. Try to take a stack of at least 20, and you should be safe from most monster attacks. Make sure that each front-line noble has some troops. Most monsters tend to leave larger stacks alone, but there are some exceptions. Talk to other nobles in the area and find out what the risks are in your starting area. Then, make a line for the nearest forest to gather some wood and make some weapons for your troops.

5.1) Armies

If you want to go monster-hunting in the wilderness, then you should build an army that is big enough to take minimal losses against weaker monster stacks. Be sure to have a few crossbowmen (or even archers) in the back row. One simple force might be:

One noble with "Fight to the Death" and CMIB=10, controlling 20 pikemen, behind 0
A second noble, with 10 light xbowmen, behind 9

In this example, the crossbowmen provide the offensive punch (1,1,15) while the pikemen (5,15,0) provide protection to them.

Try to use soldiers (5,5) as the minimum standard for your combat troops. Skirmishers (3,3) aren't trustworthy and tend to run away when some of their comrades are killed. Always try to keep some form of missile troops in your army. Since the missile round occurs before the melee round during a battle, the missile fire is like having a free round of attack before the enemy can even react (that is, unless they have their own missile troops). In addition, if you are attacked, you get a free round of missile fire before the battle even starts!

5.2) Battle notes

Things to remember:

The defender may be entitled to some defense bonuses depending on the terrain (see combat bonuses in the rules).
The weather can ruin even the best-planned attack if it is windy or raining (see Limits to Missile Troops in the rules).
Each missile troop in the back line must be protected by someone in the front line in order to attack. Therefore it is probably best to have more front-line men (since they are the ones getting killed first) than missile troops.
Each noble can control 10 men when their stack is the aggressor and 30 when the enemy initiated the attack. This can be increased by knowledge of Control Men In Battle.
If one side badly outnumbers the other, all attackers may not be used. Only 4 times the number of remaining defenders are allowed to attack, and these are chosen randomly (so the attacker's strongest nobles may not get to attack at all in this case!)
The stack leader will always be the last one hit. Even monsters have a stack leader!
Other nobles and monsters may have an artifact or skill that can improve their combat ratings.

5.3) Battle simulation

There is an easy (but pretty crude) way to simulate a simple battle on paper or in your head. This is good for fighting monsters, mostly, since they usually only have one type of monster in the stack.

1) Make a list of all the men or beasts involved for each side. For instance:

Us:	Them:
1 noble (front): (80,80,0)	20 orcs (20,15,0)
20 soldiers (front): (5,5,0) (will fight at 5,10 in the mountains)
1 noble (back): (80,80,0)
10 lgt xbowmen (back): (1,1,15)

2) Modify the combat ratings for any combat bonuses. In our example, let's pretend that this combat takes place in the mountains and that the orcs are attacking our party. In this case, we will double our defense bonus so that soldiers = (5,10,0).

3) Now, go through the steps of the battle, and use the attack/defense ratings to estimate the number of "kills" on each side. For each attack, we will expect (on average) a number of defenders to be killed. This number is equal to {(attack factor)/[(attacker factor) + (defense factor)} * (number of attackers). For instance:

Round #0: defender's free missile phase: xbowmen attacks at 15 while the orcs defend at 15.

[15/(15+15)] * 10 (lgt xbowmen) = 0.5 * 10 = 5 orcs killed

The first 15 is the attack factor of the force that is currently attacking (in this case, your missile troops); the second 15 is the same; and the third 15 is the orcs' defense factor (they don't receive the mountain defense bonus since they initiated the attack. Average Losses: Them: 5 orcs, Us: none (this phase only happens before the first round)
Note that our back-row noble isn't rated for missile attacks, and therefore doesn't join in the attack.

Iterate the following until one side is gone:

Round#1 - defender missile phase: same as before Average Losses: Them: 5 orcs (but not removed until the end of the missile round, since combat is simultaneous)
Round#1 - attacker's missile phase: orcs aren't rated for missile attacks, so skip this one.
Remove all troops lost in the missile phase by both sides now (them: 5 orcs)
Round#1 - defender's melee phase: our 20 soldiers attack the remaining 10 orcs:

[5/(5+15)] * 20 (soldiers) = 0.25 * 20 = 5 orcs killed

Also consider that our front-row noble at (80,80) has an 80/(80+15) = 0.84 = 84% chance to kill an orc with his attack, so we can count this as a 6th kill

Round#1 - attacker's melee phase: 10 orcs attack our 20 soldiers (our front line):

[20/(20+10)] * 10 orcs = 0.67 * 10 = 7 soldiers killed

Remove all troops lost in the melee phase:

Average losses: Them: 6 orcs Us: 7 soldiers
Remaining: Them: 4 orcs Us: 13 soldiers, 10 lgt xbowmen, 2 nobles

It looks like we are going to win this one handily, so we can stop here. If it was still in doubt, we could simulate another round by repeating the process staring with round#2 - defender's missile phase. If it is close, then the battle could go either way and is probably too risky to attempt. Be sure to also simulate what might happen if you got less than the average number of kills in the first round, or if the enemy did better than expected with their attack.

This is not a foolproof way to determine combat winners, as there is a lot of randomness in the process! It is merely a simulation of what, on average, the results should be for a simple combat situation. You will find out very quickly if you don't stand a chance.

6) The NK World

6.1) Cities

Cities are usually fairly safe, assuming that the ruling faction isn't paranoid. Monsters have occasionally been seen wandering into cities, but it is a rare occurrence. You can purchase and sell things on the city market, and a few minor trade items can be bought and sold there as well. A few useful items you can buy from cities include:

riding horses, to move at riding speed (double walking speed). Don't waste your money in the beginning, though, as you can make these with the Ranger skills.
oxen, to help you carry heavy loads. Oxen can be used to make hides.
iron, in very limited quantities
old books and instruction manuals. You should only buy these when you are starting out if you know what the book teaches. Otherwise, you might be throwing away your money (who needs a Manual of Instill Combat Discipline?)

In addition, some cities buy things (see Making Money in TAG).

There are usually towers and guilds of all sorts inside cities, and many nobles can be found congregating in some of the major cities.

6.2) The Wilderness

The wilderness is a very dangerous place, where wandering monsters abound! Surprisingly, many monsters exhibit intelligent behaviors. They can pillage populated provinces, enter and leave inner locations, and gauge the strength of your party and whether or not they want to attack you. For this reason, it is very important to take a small army with you when venturing from the city.

If you are attacked and lose, there are usually a few things that can happen, depending on the monster:

you could be eaten;
you could be killed outright by very evil monsters;
you could be held prisoner (though you are more likely to be eaten);
you could be robbed and then set free to fend for yourself in the wilderness.

Provinces with garrisons are less likely to have wandering monsters, but don't let this make you feel too safe. Nobles have been attacked inside garrisoned provinces before, while the garrison soldiers stood and watched.

7) Religions

One useful subset of skills in TAG are the eight religions. But which ones should you spend your time and NP learning? Should you bother learning any? There are several factors that might influence your decision.

One of the most useful things a priest can do is to resurrect your nobles who get killed, and heal those who are injured in battle or perhaps through terror. In order to do this, the noble to be helped must be a follower of the priest who is helping them. For these basic functions, any religion will do. In fact, if you aren't interested in learning any of the religious skills, you could just dedicate your nobles to a friendly priest from another faction who you know will be available in case of an emergency.

Unlike the magical arts, the religion skills are very competetive in nature. The three priests who have the most followers in each religion are very powerful and are awarded the most piety (similar to a mage's aura) and the protection of angels by their god. The remaining priests may or may not be awarded any piety based on the number of followers they each have. These priests must spend a lot more time using Devotional Prayer to increase their piety up to useful levels than the top three priests do.

When choosing a religion, you should think about a couple of things:

do you just want to have a priest to dedicate your nobles to (for resurrection/healing purposes? If so, then one of the less-popular religions may be a good choice, since there is less competition for the piety awarded.
If you are intereted in a popular religion, don't expect any free gifts of piety until you get a large number of followers. On the other hand, you shouldn't let this bother you if you are truly interested in a particular religion. Just be sure to save enough piety to resurrect a dead noble in case of an emergency.

Here is a brief reiew of each religion:

Church of Eres [2000] - probably the most useful religion for combat; weather control is a powerful tool; may only be useful if you are actually at war, though.
Church of Anteus [2100] - many useful mining skills; Weaken Building is a very powerful prayer.
Church of Dol [2200] - capture beasts and breed beasts can give you free troops; powerful monsters in inner locations can be very difficult to catch; only combat guild members can use beasts in battle, however (and note that Dol priests cannot join the combat guild!)
Church of Timeid [2300] - free powerful troops (elves), but they are somewhat flakey and tend to wander off each month.
Church of Ham [2400] - receive vision is a very useful prayer, worth the NP cost of a Ham priest. The others are only useful inside large cities with lots of nobles.
Church of Kireus [2500] - the ability to create mithril may make this religion very useful to someone who has a mage who knows Artifact Construction.
Church of Halon [2600] - free troops (fanatics); double taxes is a useful skill.
Church of Domingo [2700] - free hidden troops (ninjas), but note that a Domingo priest cannot learn Control Men in Battle; Mists of concealment can hide an entire army.

8) Miscellaneous stuff

Try to make sure your nobles are doing something productive just about every day. There are several no-cost or lost-cost things they can do to kill time:

make baskets [94] or clay pots [95] to sell on the city market
explore to find items or hidden locations
seek to find hidden nobles
repair an inn or tower
recruit peasants or train workers/soldiers/etc.
sell their services to other factions as a teacher for a week

Things that can ruin your turn:

Improper use of the wait command. Read the rules on this carefully. Then, read them again! In fact, read them each time you use the command until you have this section of the rules memorized! Note that multiple events can trigger a wait. For instance "wait teacher 1000 day 10" will wait for someone to teach shipcraft [1000] or day 10, whichever comes first. This keeps you from relying too much on other nobles, who may mess up their orders.
Forgetting to set your accepts and admits properly (both you, and those whom you are interacting with). If you don't admit someone to your stack (from another faction), then they can't stack with you. If you don't use accept properly, then (a) someone who is suppose to give you an item won't be able to give it to you, or (b) a badguy can give you something that you don't want (e.g. if you use "accept 0 0", someone could hand your noble some stone to immobilize him or her.)
Forgetting to make sure you have enough money to pay the troops. It may not ruin the turn, but it wastes a lot of time.
Technical Difficulties. Be sure to submit your orders before the last minute! You can always change them later.

Check your orders! Here are some tips to help out:

use comments (start with a "#") on each line help you keep track of what each character is doing and how many days they should have spent so far in the month. This can be especially important for complex interactions with other nobles.
check to make sure each noble has enough gold for troops maintanence, study, purchases, etc.
check to make sure that wait conditions can be met (see above).
check accept and admit permissions
check to make sure all the locations you are moving into are correct in your orders
if buying (or selling) something, be sure to stay in the location where the purchase is to be made for at least one day or the purchase (or sale) won't execute.

Bugs: These crop up occasionally, but the moderator is usually very good about responding to them promptly. Notes:

Usually, the only compensation is money for your claim, or perhaps a free or partially credited turn if it was ruined or if you turn up a documentable serious bug. An NP may be awarded if one was destroyed by the bug (these are just observations based on small problems in the early game, and are certainly subject to the whim of the moderator; see the rules on compensation).
If you think something is a bug, but aren't sure, use the search feature in the rules to look it up before reporting it. If you think it is a bug, then quote the relevant section of the rules when you email the moderator. By doing this, you might even find out that it wasn't a bug but just a misinterpretation of the rules by yourself before you needlessly harass him.

Olympia Game 2 players should read Lord Corum of Tanelorn's excellent G2 to TAG Primer

(Future sections may include: diplomacy/communication, trade, being a good/bad citizen or alliance member, overview of rmagic skills. Comments about this document are encouraged!)