New Player—How and What to Spend my Medals on

Hello folks,

I've managed to scrounge up my username and password to this account after years of inactivity (I had played EW4 before, and my display name used to be Arthur Wellesley). I just started EW7 two weeks ago, and I'm starting to get a hang of the mechanics and systems and have stalled on Chapter VIII of the campaign. I have bought the Proof of Honor and have another $10 or so I would be willing to spend on some of the premium generals in the long run. But, at the moment, I am more concerned on how and where to spend my medals—of which I have 12,803. That should be plenty of spending power to get some good generals, but I was wondering how many medals should I spend now and how much to save for later.

I have realized that for generals I should prioritize those with hero legends and unique items, and having viewed some threads here before posting this one, I know that some of the generals I was looking at (Roland, Alfred, and Cnut) in combination with their items are top quality. Those three generals would consume nearly half of my medals though, so I wanted to ask any experienced players if it's a wise decision to buy them now, or instead I should wait or even do something else.

I'm not too concerned about getting all the very, very best in everything, especially as I can be partial to topics and historical persons of interest to me—for example, I recently read The Song of Roland, which is why I was first interested in getting him, only later to read that he is a very good general in game, too. For that reason, I'm tempted to pick up some lower generals who might not have the best stats, but who I have read about in books. It's fun to play around in this way, too and that way I don't have the same half dozen generals as everyone else.

Thanks in advance for any advice, and I welcome any other suggestions which would be useful to a new player.

Thank you all!