All this feedback is based on the kingdom research tree

A. General

First off research at the moment has the problem, that you can beeline to the techs you want. If i want pure research, simply choose the reseach technologies in civics. If you want to design units -> reseach weapons till claymore (achieveable at warfare techlevel 4 or 5).

This could be remedied by adding techlevel requirements to the more powerfull technologies. E.g., "Superior Cutting Weapons" requires a warfare techlevel of at least 12 to appear, or alternatively, the probability for higher level techs is vastly decreased with low techlevel, e.g., 5% chance to appear + 5% per techlevel.

The problem is enhanced by the very short research trees which are only about 4 levels deep. With only one city containing a lost library i was finished researching by turn 350. That is much too short.

Now to the technology trees themselves.


B. Civcis

The civcis tree possesess 12 individual technologies and 4 repeatables (+ 2 repeatables that should be warfare and diplomacy).

Two Technologies are useless:

Harvesting -> you can already build lumberyards from teh beginning.

Mining -> the same.

Obviosly the tree is much to short and should contain a number of technologies similar to the Warfare tree (28). I am not sure what can be done there but some technologies could be splitted (e.g. entertainment). Obviously we also need more dedicated buildings and associated technologies here.

C. Warfare

The Warfare tree looks relatively good. It has 28 technologies and, i think, 3 repeatables – where one resides at the moment in Civics. It mostly is hindered by the things mentioned at A. General.

So adding some required techlevel will smooth this out. However there are still some problems here:

First off the Equipment tech offers a lot of things that should be placed in other research trees. The Pacs should move to Adventuring (and only be available to Heroes as +5 Hp for a common unit douples their life pool for a releatively small cost). The magic rings should be placed in an magical tech. Generally you might want to move some equipment to other trees.

Furthermore, some technologies give a large number of weapons of different strength. These should be kept seperate, as a player will simply choose the best and ignore the others (because all cost similar resources, and the power/cost ratio is best for the strongest weapons). The weapon power increases should in my opinion be smaller. Right now you can literally jump with one technology from weapons strength 6 to strength 18, thus tripling your melee power. This also means that your strength value gets dramtically better with some reseach, and is quite useless without warfare technology.

I would propose that all weapons given by one technology provide similar strength. You could then end with to weapon research lines that go 6 - 9 - 12 - 15 - 18 in strength [one for blunt weapons (which should require mostly materials, and might be at the lower end 5 - 8 - 11 - 14 - 17) and one for swords (which require mostly metal being on the upper end 7 - 10 - 13 - 16 - 19)]. I feel capping at 18 seems sensible, because a multiplier of 1.8 on strength (compared to the hit point available to units and champions) seems high enough. If you deem 18 to low you should start higher so maybe start at 10 and increase in steps of 5. The final weapons should not be 30 times as strong as the lower level ones, this is by far to much variance!

A last idea considering weapons, is to add some special weapons, like a halberd or pike, that deals double damage to mounted units (somewhere around weapon rating of 12). Some others com also to mind but i will make a seperate thread dealing with those proposals. Those wespons would make tactical combat somewhat more, now, tactical.

For armor it would be nice, if you distinguish some more between leather (material heavy armor) and plate (metal heavy armour) and add additonal studded leather or something similar. The 'High qualitiy armor tech' should only reward one set of armor, while the other might be a seperate tech. This will clean up the technology a bit, and, because both armor sets are plate armor, the player will at the moment typically ignore the weaker one (if he has enough metal to build armored troops).

Furthermore, one could add magical armor and weapons here (crystal heavy), which would also depend on a minimal magic technology level, of course, so requiring the end of both research trees.

D. Magic

This tree has only 8 technologies, 2 repeatables.
Obviously we will see much more in this tree in the future.

Some ideas i have myself:
You could, for example, move the increase of spell levels from the archane reseach to this research category. So Magical power increases similar to Melee power (as i assume higher level combat spells will add a higher modifier to the int value than the 1.0 provided by first level spells).

More magical items should be added to the tree, e.g., the rings from Equipment (in Warfare) should be moved here (Note here, that equipping 4 or more diffent rings as possible at the moment seems a bit excessive).
Equipment for wizards could also be a tech, e.g., some different looking Wizards Robes (+1 Int), and some Wizards Staffs (+1 Int or Wisdom).

Furthermore you could add some kind of training tab, that allows one special ability to be added to troops, and some of these could be reseached via magic. E.g., to throw an fireball like wizards in MoM, or magical ranged attacks (ok these might also be added to the weapon slot as wands).

E. Adventuring

Adventuring has 10 Levels, which are mostly useless besides pushing the notable levels.

The guilds should not directly add units, but should add options to your designed units. Going on two lines, designed units and predesigned units is confusing. Either remove the designing part (which could be done at the moment without much loss of depth) or the predesigned units. If designed units get more intrestiong then the predesigned units should be confined to summoning!!

I think "Seafaring" and the "Mounted Warfare" could be moved from Warfare to Adventuring (focussing on the exploration part).

Furthermore, you should move the packs (scouts pack, adventurers pack, medical pack and so forth) to the adventuring tree. A mid strength weapon, that is typical for Exploreres, would also fit the adventuring tree, this could be, e.g., a Machete, Axes or even a Torch.
Poisons would also fit to the adventuring tree.

Adventuring could also add some special abilities like stealth or an defense ignoring attack, that could be added to the training mentioned at magicss (one per unit) to the units.

F. Diplomacy

Only 6 techs and I think one repeatable.

All of the techs seem usefull.

Here obviosly also much work and ideas are required.
The palace could be moved as a technology here.

Further treaties to reseach could be:
- reseach treaty
- arcane research treaty
- offensive pact (e.g. please declare war on XXX )
- proposeal of peace (e.g. please make peace with my ally XXX )
- proposeal of coordinated attack (e.g. we attack city XXX together  )
- a dedicated trade treaty that allow trading to other cities, so independent of the non aggression pact
- request of tribute
- threat (so you could add the option "Or i will attack you" which would have a worth depending on the relative power and relations)