I have been playing Empire since I got the game. Today I thought I would try a Kingdom.
The Kingdom tech tree seems much, much more developed than Empire. Have the devs made any comment on this? Do other players feel they are equal? I'd be interested in people who have played both and their opinions!
J
i still haven't found the tech for archery as an empire player. and i'm 10 techs into conquest.
I would agree, the kingdom tree feels much more complete, particularly their civic tree.
I'm going to pull a Captain Obvious and say they REALLY need to have polished this game more.
I've played nothing but kingdom to date... the possibility that the empire tech tree is even LESS developed is troubling.
Empire has good things to. For example, you can research very quickly in war three (however it's called) techs that give two buildings that decrease training of troops by 25% (for total of 50%). And buildings themselves are super cheap. And both are buildable by level 1 cities.
Empire also gets very quickly housing tech that gives 50 population capacity per food.
The tech tree in generally is uninspired even if it were fleshed out. When you start running into 'continuously researched' techs that simply gives a percentage bonus by level 3 or 4, that's a bad sign.
Weapons of Piercing I believe.
The thing about the Empire tree is that most of the techs are only likely to show rather than guaranteed. The guaranteed techs tend to be those primarily useful for conquest - allied races and the group techs. I suspect the intent is to encourage the player to start recruiting armies and dominating the land rather than trying to tech up.
I find annoying that economy buildings of the Empire costs me a fortune in materials. Makes sense, I suppose, but still annoying.
The main difference, I believe, is that the empire lacks buildings that add prestige, making it nearly impossible to fully level cities in a reasonable amount of time. This creates a lopsided balance as kingdom economies will expand much faster and leave the Empires in the dust. That is, after the vigilant minion spam exploit which guarantees Empire victory is patched.
Maybe the vigilant minion is meant to force the Kingdoms to provide a military which slows their expansion? Then it's not an exploit but a balance?
Not to derail the thread into another VM discussion, but the arcane doom ability literally allows you to destroy any practical army in the game on the first turn. For more, see the "Summon Spy" and "Vigilant Minion too powerful" threads.
This is something we're looking into. I agree with you that Arcane Doom is probably overpowered at the moment, but we've held back on nerfing it at this point because we're working on an overhaul of the magic system.
Woohoo! That is certainly great news! I have been planning a massive balance mod as well, but I don't want to start until things have stabilized a bit and we know what systems we are working with.
But back to the Empire tree, if people have so many differing opinions on it, its very possible that it is balanced as is. I, however, am pretty certain that once MP is enabled, people will notice a distinct Empire owns the early game/Kingdom wins the long haul dynamic.
I think both trees need another pass to fine tune them for all the rapid changes that have and are taking place. Lack of a population boosting building in Empire does cripple it quite a bit.
About population boosting... while I have made a thread on prestige kingdom vs. empire (didn't see this one, but I also thought it seemed rather lopsided) there is one thing I've been considering, namely that empire is supposed to depend more on talented individuals than an educated people. This may also count for prestige - namely, royalty. Currently that doesn't work (They don't increase prestige in a city, as far as I know) but if that's fixed, then things may become more even.
Of course, perhaps empire should have a 'manor' or 'estate' or something building which gives a +100% bonus to any visiting champions' ability, wether it's a merchant, royal, or researcher.. the building would also provide a certain amount of population room, I assume. This could even be turned into a series of buildings.
I don't think it does, because the city level requirements for Empire buildings are lower than the Kingdom requirements. Except for special buildings from the Conquest tree, and the diplomat building, all Empire buildings can be built with a level 3 city. The special buildings require city level 4. Nothing requires city level 5.
Kingdom takes a lot of steps to get somewhere, but those steps are certain.
Empire takes less steps, but have to deal with random chance. However, they unlock a lot per step.
That's basically how the research seems to run.
@Andon
The issue is the massive city leveling bonuses, not the raw population stat or building requirement.
You can get warhammers with first war tech, if you are lucky with empire.
I love the Empire tech tree. The emphasis on semi-random research, along with the few strategies reinforced by the guaranteed research, makes for a more interesting and dynamic game IMO.
I believe this is only possible if you use a faction with the Archery bonus. For Kingdom, Archery (Ranged Weapons) is a dead-end tech. For Empire, Archery (Piercing Weapons) is on the main weapons tech line and a prereq for Smiting. It's fun to research smiting within the first 10 turns of the game and create a unit type that will never need to be upgraded.
Actually, the two times I played Empire so far I always go for great scimitar troops (tech after lord hammer I believe?), they are absolutely dirt cheap in comparison and you can field an endless army of them if you have enough metal. I just pump them out with no other equips, they are almost as cheap as peasants with 10x the ATK, then proceed to mow down everything in their path. While the concept of randomize tech chances is nice and refreshing, I think the techtree itself is a bit broken, especially so with that archery faction pick.
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