I've put in a lot of game time with FE now and I find I really enjoy the game up to a certain point - then I could care less what happens and so usually start a new game. This concerns me greatly because since the first couple of games this has been a regular feeling I've had. Mind you, this is still a very good game but replayability will be a casualty.
The start of the game has interesting strategic choices but by mid game it has become a 'rinse and repeat' exercise which is really boring strategically. I was very critical of the fact that War of Magic was more about process than about choice - and unfortunately Fallen Enchantress also reached this process-driven stage as well by the mid game. And the larger the map the bigger the problem.
The two problems I'm referring to are:
Before looking at these issues, let's recap on the portion of the game that is enjoyable that leads to these problems.
At the start of the game your location has both opportunities and threats. Depending on what monsters will spawn near-by you need to decide how much you can explore or whether you need to hover around home base. And if there are nearby resources this will drive what you research and what you will build in your starting city. Things start slowly but that's OK because this first phase is all about exploring your surrounds and recruiting what champions you can as well as completing quests to try and get 'cashed up'. At this point the world is a big scary place and you need to tread carefully. There is a ton of strategic choice.
After this is the initial land grab. You have found some resources you particularly want so you try and secure these. You will also have met one or two other players by now so there is a bit of a race to get the best spots. Your champion stack of 3 or 4 champions can now defeat medium strength monsters so you don't have it all your own way. You clean out what you can near your base and also explore. No point building troops yet because they are too weak to do much and they will cost you gildar each turn - and money is still very tight. This phase is mainly about developing your champions. Your couple of cities are trying to build city improvements or pioneers. Once again, this is enjoyable because you still have a lot of strategic choice.
Then you get to the 'Champion stack of doom' phase where your champion stack is 'Strong' or 'Deadly' and can pretty much wipe anything other than the occasional 'Epic' monster stack. You now have about 6 champions in your stack and probably 3 or four cities. At this point the challenge has gone and all you need to do is move your stack of doom anywhere you want and wipe the map. This is where you finish off cleaning up the 'Deadly' monster stacks near your starting cities. On a small map you have now nearly won the game but on larger maps you now have to settle in for the grind. You usually now start attacking and defeating other players. You would generally start this phase on about equal footing with the other players but once you have conquered one you will be close to double the score of the nearest computer player. Now strategic choice just comes down to choosing which direction to move your stack of doom and pumping out pioneers to capture more territory. Before this phase you knew the names of your cities and what their role was in your strategy. After this phase the names mean nothing.
The game has moved from interesting strategic choice to boring process-driven rinse and repeat.
Finally, if you keep playing once you have more than double the next players score (that is usually the trigger now for me to start again) you have the added process-driven task of micromanaging your exponentially expanding cities, their build queues, and their caravans. This becomes the final phase for me and I can't play much into it without losing all interest. There are no real choices left to make and it becomes all about micro-management.
So while I really enjoy the way the game starts, I really get bored with it once it hits the middle game. I hope this hasn't been overly negative because I still really enjoy the direction Fallen Enchantress has gone and I can really appreciate the game mechanic choices you guys have made. It is still a good game - just not a great game - because of those two problems.
The challenge is how can the game be kept interesting by shifting the strategic choices to match the phase the game is in.
There has been a lot of discussion about how to fix the Champion stack of doom but for me it has to be about limiting the number of champions that can work together in a stack. Also splitting the XP after combat would be helpful - and perhaps having a third of the XP split between the champions and two thirds split between the troops might help give incentive to make different army stacks.
Starting the game with a small number troops could also help in a number of ways. Perhaps a combination of incentives to keep only a couple of champions in a stack as well as some starting troops is a possibility.
I really liked one of the suggestions in the forum to have troop leadership bonuses that affect just the troops in your stack in meaningful ways but don't affect the champions. This would provide a lot of incentive to treat the champions as generals rather than just Achilles-type heroes.
The city spam is a much more difficult question to find an answer to.
Historically, states and city states had their home-lands and they also had conquered territories that tended to work as vassals. If in Fallen Enchantress you were limited in the number of cities and outposts you could build then this initial pool of cities and resources would become your homeland. There could be some technologies to increase this number over time but basically you would have a small pool of cities you could use to raise armies etc.
When you conquered a city it would simply became a vassal city-state that automatically sent a caravan to your capitol and provided you with its resources. That way these would basically be on auto and you couldn't actually manage them. You couldn't decide what these vassal cities build. And you couldn't use these cities to build troops. You could still move troops in to help defend them.
By doing this you would still keep large areas of wildlands on large maps and you would be focussing on your homeland cities for your development. Newly conquered cities would build their caravan and this would then establish a road to move more troops quickly from the homeland to the frontline. And it would keep the city spam and caravans within your homelands manageable.
By having vassal cities it could also make the Path of the Governor bonuses more meaningful if they could perform certain tasks within vassal cities such as force the recruitment of mercenary troops or affect the build queue. Especially if the Champion stack of doom issue is resolved.
Sorry for making this such a long winded post. Here is a quick summary of the suggestions for those who want to skip all the crap.
Champion 'stack of doom' solved by making real incentives to limit the number of champions in an army stack.
City spam 'micromanagement hell' solved by having limited number of homeland cities and captured cities become self-governing vassals.
Hope this is helpful and I hope it isn't too negative. As I said, this is a good game but could be made into a great game.
Noticed exactly the same boring pattern.
Some ideas are:
Split champion exp among all units in army (not troop exp).
RARE respawn of monster lairs outside of your territory to threaten cities and mines.
I wonder if the devs could introduce some traits where heroes may refuse to party with others due to jealousy, politicking the sovereign for favor, random fights over women (jk), basically don't like each other kind of thing. May be better than a mechanical hard cap on how many heroes in a stack and introduce a little random personality stuff (since we don't have dynasties). I dunno it's late and I'm thinking out loud. Meh, this whole idea would need to be fleshed out.
I have noticed the same problem and in most cases i quit and start a new game, because i know i have won, but that is boring and unsatisfying.
Another solution would be that the AI players fight together against the human player, because he is the biggest threat, or that the player with the highest score is attacked by a special monster as in Master of Orion.
Good post!
I have recently joined the beta and i have to say i am really impressed with FE thus far. But i have to agree with every thing you said.
Perhaps as a way to diversify the roles of champions whilst simultaneously minimising city spam is to require that each city has a resident champion acting as a governor. A city that does not have a governor would be unable to produce any thing and would act mearly as a settlement of sorts. This would encourage taking the champions off of the battlefield and putting them into administrative roles which should cut down on champ stacks of doom.
Perhaps another way to look at it would be expanding the role of outposts. The city that the sov founds at the begining is the only city you can build and further cities arise from outposts. Outposts would develop into settlements but for this to occur, a champion with administrative skills must be stationed at one for a period of time (or even attached indefinately). This would encourage diversity in champion builds so that we are not inclined to just fashion a further mage or warrior.
Anyways, middle and end game needs some work to match the solid early game fun.
I recently made a post similar to this. Yours is much more eloquent than mine. I agree with you completely about everything you said. The game is a whole lot of fun for a few hours, at which point you've basically won. At that point, you're either in for a tedious grind to complete your victory or you start over.
In regards to your efforts to reduce the 'stack o doom' mechanic:
A hard cap on the number of champions in a group skirts the issue of 'realism' a bit too much for me. I honestly can't think of a good reason they wouldn't work together. Regular D&D groups attest to this. I would much prefer positive reasons to use other units.
Using bonuses to army abilities is a good idea. They would have to be non-stackable and apply only to regular units. In this way, you could still group your champions together, but grouping them together with regular units provides an overall greater advantage. Or at least it has the potential too.
I agree that xp should be split differently between regular units and champions. The exact value might need tweaking.
In regards to removing 'micromangement hell':
Empire building games normally require you to maintain a continually sprawling empire. They could do things that made the expansion of your empire beyond a certain point only improve it by a marginal ammount - there is no reason to limit forts - but isn't the crux of the matter that building 'isn't fun' ?
An 'autobuild' option for cities would go a long way to limit micromanagement, but setting up new cities should feel important besides that. Making a 'research hub' or a 'military outpost' should have meaning. One thing I did like about "War of Magic" was that city placement really mattered. Making world resources have a greater impact would lend to this, but it may be too late for such a change.
The only placement that matters now is snaking to mana shards.. which is super annoying. All because of one silly building too.. *sigh*
Sorry I'm starting to ramble.. Lets hope the devs are paying attention to this stuff. ^^
Happened to me as well. Honestly, it tends to happen with all 4x games, but the problem here is the "magnitude" of the issue. Let me add that micromanaging is not an issue in itself, actually it can be the funniest part. The problem here is that early enough it becomes pointless.
I've decided to wait for the next Beta Serie before trying another FE game (apparently a couple of weeks from now they're going to release a version with new content and AI).
You know, this post got me thinking about a couple of things that may make the game a lot more fun and interesting - at least to me. Because I have to agree, by the time the game gets into mid-to-late game everything is all rinse and repeat and I don't think there is any amount of fine tuning and code tweaking that can fix the problem. The issue persisted with the original War of Magic game, and I fear it will continue to persist onward as a visible flaw in the game's overall design. Sure that may be stating something on the extreme side, but it wouldn't do harm to see whether or not its a true statement.
Another thing that bothered me is the difficulty it took to craft units and build a sizable army that was really meaningful. Units were always too weak, took several seasons to build only just one unit, and would always have to take what felt like years to upgrade to the point of even being remotely useful. This factor pigden-holes the player into just dropping the idea of building an army of units and instead just focused on building an army of champions. Champions are everywhere on the map, they are cheap and come with the ability to upgrade into powerful units at no additional cost.
Early game you do not have an abundance of these trained, and often not having a lot of equipment and gear makes monsters and other nations a threat. Yet once your characters begin to advance into level 20 and start to get some pretty solid powers that do tremendous amount of damage -- the whole process snow balls. The game becomes a race to hunting down and upgrading to Wargs as fast as possible - giving your champions insane movement speed. At the meager price of 100g-per-Warg-per-Champ you turn your army into a mobile strike force with Cloud Walk. Toss in a couple of additional units with Compasses, +1 Move boots, and Master Scout and you're exceeding 10+ Moves per turn.
In mid to late, all you need is just one army. But this one army has a huge number of cities to maintain. What might be healthy for the game is to reverse this ratio.
Instead of Champions being positioned around the map to be unlocked and utilized, it may be better if these were Army Units instead. In the old game Lords of Magic I would come across wandering squads all the time. I could open dialogue with them and persuade them to fight for my cause, typically through paying the money. Rarely I would encounter a Champion. I could even talk to units and armies who were working for the enemy nation and also buy them out for the right price. The more loyal they were, the more expensive they would be to buy out.
Currently, I have to admit it but I think the biggest flaw of the game right now is the city building and over abundance of cities you will be developing as the game progresses. This ends up becoming much more of a chore for me, and it's a pain in the ass to try to build forward bases that can't produce units because they are too busy building a Garden on the front lines.
The strongest aspect of Fallen Enchantress is the TACTICAL battle element, not the city building. Sure the City Building is well and good, but it takes a distant back seat to the rest of the game in its current form and feels more like something that hinders the player rather than a boon to aid them. So what I'm about to do is make a suggestion, you are welcome to agree or disagree as you like - but after playing the game this is my honest feedback that I feel might be a nice thing to test.
Reverse the Ratio of City Building v Army Building:
Do away with the current War Research Tree. This feels completely arbitrary, even though it falls in like with the Galactic Civ 2 mind-set. Honestly, this worked in Galatic Civ 2 because the game felt slower paced, especially if you spread your planets and resources across the galaxy. This meant you'd spent a lot of time without actually doing any kind of fighting, and could focus on constructing a lot of research. The game became mostly about managing these planets and setting them to do what you wanted to do, and it worked. Yet Elemental isn't Gal Civ 3, and shouldn't proceed along this path - since this game has quests and constant battles, this is an entirely different beast.
The War Tech Tree hinders the progression of a player's army, especially by forcing some of the most important items way down the line: Additional Army Slots, Increase Sizes of Groups and Squads, Ability to recruit Trolls and Dragons, Ride Wargs -- have all be pushed to the butt end of the progression. This is discouraging to the player, and assumes the game is going to drag out for infinity before any action actually happens. But in reality, the player is fighting from the get go - especially in Fallen Enchantress as larger creatures now dwell closer to home and some even of Deadly/Epic strength and size.
In order to keep up, the player rapidly collects Champions and upgrades them cheaply and effectively - leading us to our current problem. Army Development and City development may be more effective if they were treated as completely different entities in Fallen Enchantress.
Forward Bases:
Instead of building a city as my forward bases, I'd actually physically build a base. I shouldn't have to train pioneers for this either. My sovereign and champions should be given the power to construct forward bases whenever and wherever I choose. Forward bases can cost me a unit of soldiers to construct and populate instead of having to wait for slow pioneers to crawl across the world to get where I want them to be. Once constructed, the Forward Bases can function like City Building, but require vastly fewer structures and build them far faster.
At the same time while these structures are being build, the Forward Base can produce additional fighting units. Squad Size and Army slots should be available from the start. I should not have to research these options, instead they should offer benefits for making the choice of how many units I want in a team.
Instead of having 3 soldiers in a Squad as a generic basic and 5+ soldiers being the max, the middle option should be the norm and you should have access to all from the start. Like Warhammer Fantasy Battles on the table top, generally the smaller the squad size the more powerful those models were in the squad. Generally the more abundant your models, the weaker your unit was! Take Skaven for instance, their were all about numbers! But they had lots and lots of throw away meat-shield models to throw at the enemy to keep trying the up. Contrary to this Elves had fewer models per unit, making them far more deadly to deal with because they had better trained models that were heavily geared up like near groups of champions rather than junk models.
You make the choice, you can choose to pump out more soldiers early game by choosing the max setting, but they'll be lightly geared and not so effectively trained. Instead if you choose to pick out a fewer number of soldiers produced per squad, they'll be better geared and better trained. There shouldn't really be a limit to how many units you can put into an army, the whole Army Slot idea feels like a big road block to having some pretty fun battles. This feels like a last minute balance issue show horned into, and doesn't seems like a good idea at all.
Forward Bases can also have established defenses that are more advanced than cities. While it's nice that cities have Stone Guardians, I'd personally like Archer Towers myself. So when a city is under attack, these towers can always be manned and start opening fire. Archers on walls, now there is a novel idea.Wonder why you never see it done in Fallen Enchantress. Instead the Archers just sit on the battle field and get nuked. This just doesn't seem like real war.
Why Build a Garden on the Front Line!?
We're at war with the enemy nation two grid spaces away and my new town can only build a Garden? Seriously!? This is my thought when I look at the game. I want to be establishing a launching point for war, a fort with walls, turrets, and likely walls I outline myself instead of having them drawn out automatically by the game.
Champions:
These should be far more rare and far more special when you come across them. They are golden heros of war! Instead of coming across a dozen around the next foggy corner, I should have to complete quests to earn their favor if they are really cool. This would give me more interest in who they are, especially if their quests come with some sizable back story too.
Additionally, I should be able to create Champions completely from scratch. NOT by researching them and them popping the out of my Forward Bases like normal units - instead by combing through my sizable army and looking for soldiers who seemed to have been performing better than others. Their states show and improvement far better than their peers so I pick out the soldier from the squad and make him/her my apprentice. After a few seasons, they'd have not only developed into a advanced fighters but also become upgradable to Champions once they reach a certain apprentice level. When they reach it, I can gift them Mana and they are reborn into powerful fighters I can name!
With this being said, this means I can turn just about anything or anyone into a Champion. That's right, even that wandering Spider I purchased into a powerful Spider Queen I call Percilla, or maybe train up that baby dragon egg I found and turn him into the White Dragon God of Omens or something like that.
Make it something like a Poke'Mon pet game and you're golden.
War Research:
Doing away with the War Tech Tree would instead mean you'd need an alternative way to develop your armies abilities. Basic Armor like Leather really shouldn't have to be researched, making defending units that have 0 Def is pretty much a joke. I should be able to have leather from the start, but still be able to choose NO armor if I want. Who knows, I like the idea of creating weak slaves in massive units to send in to try up the enemy for a while - I should be able to do this early game without a hitch.
Weapons are the same. All units should always be fully upgradable, it doesn't seem smart to have to pick and choose whether or not I want them to be flexible or not. I should be able to retire units I don't want anymore within a forward base, retiring units should increase the productivity of the Forward Base and increase the effectiveness of training and damage output from new squads that are produced in that point. Sending in old vets to train newer units seems like a natural thing to do.
If I defeat Trolls and Dragons, I should be able to instantly recruit them regardless of whether or not they are in my zone of influence. If I make them submit, I just tell the game which Forward Base I want them to be deployed from and that Troll/Dragon will then travel to that Forward Base and make an amendment to it. Now I can produce and deploy Trolls and/or Dragons from Forward Bases of my choosing. Same goes for Darklings.
Wargs and horses shouldn't be things I randomly come across. I should also have to locate amendments I can attach. I do like the idea of global sharing of horses and wargs, this really should remain. I just don't like the idea of having to build an outpost near wild wargs. If I encounter wild wargs, I should be able to defeat them and send them back to a Forward Base like the Trolls and Dragons. Horses should just be an upgrade I can research in a Forward Base, but Wargs should be little more special. I should earn Wargs, but not through simple research.
Whatever else can be put into an isolated development tree that Forward Bases can research on their own, completely unique and disconnected from cities.
Give Units Equipables Too!
Why just Champions? If I wanna upgrade my Patrol of Bowmen, allow me to open up an inventory and switch out their gear! Give them better bows, refine their stats and make them just like I want them to be. Having to keep going back in and designing new units and having the game slowly pump them out hinders the fun and the flow. The Design Tool should always be available for units you've made and want to customize on the fly. You should be able to adjust their appearance and retool their gear just by the click of a button and another shop - much like champions are handled! Do this for all units and we've got ourselves a game.
Wrapping up:
Ultimately, I shouldn't have to build and maintain a lot cities. In fact, I should only have to build a few of these. My flow of incoming soldiers and troops should purely come from Forward Bases. Champions should be quest rewards or trained myself, and War Research may work better if it were kept out of cities too. This may be a good direction to consider, or at least try out in an experiment because honestly I feel Fallen Enchantress is held down by this constant need to build and maintain cities that feel more like a nagging mother by the end of the game rather than a needed resource. Eventually I just forget about them entirely and the game doesn't suffer for it. There has to be a better way to do this.
I love the way Heroes of Might and Magic does it. You need 1 leader to create an battalion/army. You find new leaders to create extra battalions to explore the world. And each army fought a little different depending on which hero-type leader you have, caster, melee, etc...
I think this game would work better with faster producing armies and only 1 leader/champion allowed to run each group.
This doesn't work in Elemental, where you can design your own units and aren't limited the way you suggest. And there aren't many disadvantages to going for larger units, mostly advantages.
Maybe the ability of players to conquer quickly needs to be reduced. If players are easily moving from one city to the next then you don't really have time to get familiar with the cities you conquer, they become kinda blah. You shouldn't be able to run around willy nilly conquering entire empires in one go anyway.
A unrest bonus on recently conquered cities maybe? In order for that to work I guess it would have too have a global component so that conquering a city has an effect on your gold and production output, and if you conquer too many cities too quickly it will harm your empire. Also if the city is still rebellious then it will revolt if it is ungarrisoned. Maybe even have militia, determined by pop size, attack the garrison if it is too weak. That would make for some cool world building. The peasants are rebelling, time to put them down!
Also this would encourage razing and reduce the amount cities you do own, although you shouldn't be able to raze right off the bat, it should take several turns.
if units are specialized and all have a specific use you will always have to have a mix of units instead of just focusing on building the huge expensive ones. you could also have a cap on how many large units the player can have built at any given time in a game. a combination of both is the best. taking ideas from warhammer is good, tabletop gaming really has a lot to give this game.
I only played one game thus far but can see where this is going.
Off the top of my head i think the champions should have upkeep. And that it would possibly go up with their level.
Would make you think twice about having a big stack of them if they are greedy bastards.
I think some of the problem here is people keep expecting a HOMM clone where a single hero shut ups, sits in the back and supports troops instead of actually participating and being all Skyrim-esque and able to get powerful in their own right and form Fellowships of only heroes.
Aside from completely destroying the whole Strategy/RPG hybrid that this game is designed around, perhaps a good compromise is limiting 4 champions to a group. 4 is the standard number of Adventurers that team up these days in RPGs. But really "Stacks of Doom" is something that happens in all Strategy games like this. I remember people whining about Civilization games having Stacks of doom too.
The thing is who cares? If you dont want a stack of doom, dont use it? Its a viable strategy. If a person puts the time and money into leveling several heroes and building some strong troops then what does it matter?
Dont blame the system if you cant keep yourself from doing things you dont like. This is like saying Remove the Save game function because people dont like reloading when something bad happens.
I'd like the option to put cities on auto pilot ala Civ and MoM, but would not want to be forced to give up control of my conquered cities.
This post reflects my experience as well. It would be really wonderful if a solution to the city spam issue could be devised since it seems like every single 4X game suffers from it and it just isn't fun. I suppose some people might enjoy the challenge of being able to manage all those cities and keep track of everything, but I'd much rather try and maintain some personality in the game by putting the player into a situation where they're only going to be able to hold on to a few cities and they just have to make the best of them. That would be a fun challenge in itself and it would mean you would actually remember the names of your cities and have a sense of history about them.
Forcing the player to invent their own rules to make the game actually fun and not a pushover isn't an example of good game design. If they implemented a golden ticket into the game that randomly appeared on the map that allowed the player to immediately win as soon as they picked it up, would it then be reasonable to say hey if you don't want to win instantly don't pick up the ticket? It's silliness.
In reverse order:
@ LordRikerQ: A lot of the table top RPG games I've seen are designed around 5, as well, not always 4 (depends on the system) . Just throwing that out. WoD for the win! Or GURPS (which isn't based around any assumptions, at all, lol)
@ OrleanKnight: Dude, holy cow. I honestly feel like a lot of your suggestions would ruin the game. Maybe some of them could work well if the game gets a full blown expansion pack. Your idea for "Forward bases" just kinda sounds like cities by another name.. cooler sounding cities, but still... "a city by any other name still needs to be managed" (yes, that was a bad, bad twist on a famous Shakespeare quote)
I think you hit the biggest weaknesses in this game head on, but your suggestions just seem really radical.
@ the OP: Your summary of how the game plays out is really, really well done. I also strongly agree with the fact that the stacks of doom need to be dealt with, one way or another. I'm going to make a long post about that within the next few days, I've just got too much that needs to be done to take the time right now. I think the vassal state idea is an interesting one, not sure if I would like it or not... it worked in some of the Civ games, just not sure how it would feel here in FE.
One final note... "Stacks of Doom" wouldn't be a big deal, if there were decent counters to them. They are boring when they are the best option by far.
This was a very well thought out post, good job op. While I have not played the beta as much as I've wanted to, I believe there is some merit to your concerns about champions and cities so I will chip in with some ideas.
First of all I don't know if I like the idea about straight out limiting the champions in a group. I think that could be achieved indirectly by giving penalties of some sort for having all your champions in the same army. Here are a few "penalties" that I could think of that would make you rethink if you really want to have a champion stack of doom:
- Completing quests would have a "cooldown" set upon the champions in the current army. Meaning that the heroes will not be able to start a new quest in a number of seasons till that "cooldown" dissipates. This would mean that if you spread out your heroes then you get more quests in.
Of course this isn't perfect cause I can already think of a lot cheesy strategies to avoid this penalty, like just sending in 1 heroe at a time to start the quest. So to avoid that you would have to impose a rule that once a heroe starts a quest then the army would be locked for new champs so that would probably be too complicated.
- As mentioned above splitting the XP among the champions in the current group would proably be a good idea although I'm not a big fan of it since making your champions progress is one of my favorite things in FE.
I'll add more ideas later, but basically I think there should be some sort of penalty for not spreading your champs around since there is already a huge benefit to keeping them together.
As for the city building, I feel that there is something missing with it but I can't figure out what it is. For the moment I can't think of anything aside from saying that it's missing "something".
Absolutely wonderful post, and one that expresses my feelings exactly. Here's a couple simple solutions that really haven't been suggested yet for each issue:
Champion SoD:
This is simply a problem with balance. Really the easiest one to fix. Champions are too powerful mid game. Simply adjust their XP curve to begin really ramping up around the middle levels (probably starting at 7 or so). End game this is not a problem, with the exception of mages. Spellpower and evoker bonuses are just too effective and need to be nerfed.
Changing experience to units rather than champions is not a solution, just a path to a different form of mechanics abuse.
Micromanagement Hell:
This is a much trickier problem to solve. No matter what it's going to exist, unless the mechanics of the game change pretty drastically. My suggestion is to try to improve the UI to minimize the pain of this.
Instead of clicking on a city, seeing what's available, then choosing what to build, we should have a set of two selection screens that let us pick what improvements we want in a city, and what cities we want an improvement in.
Obviously this would mean some changes. Build order would have to not matter. Perhaps all buildings are built simulatenously, with a speed depending on the production of the city? Obviously units would be developed at the same time, so build time of both would need to be adjusted.
Hey, just read something from Brad, XP will be getting split, there goes the easy stack of doom. Curious how that will work out in the long term, but there it is.
Even with split XP, units are much safer in stacks of doom...even if the snowball takes longer to get rolling. Also, the major issue is that there's no reason to use all the cool units since champions still rule in packs. They need to figure out how to make units more needed. By the time I can get a few military units rolling in the slow production system, I have 4-5 champions kicking ass.
I may actually use units if they were produced separately than buildings, as that would speed up the system.
Units are very useful and great... Late game.
Great post op. I found this to exactly be my experience.
I have suggested before and love the idea of certain heroes not getting along for some back story reason (I saw someone in this thread mention it).
I also suggested making city requirements for certain heroes (some special building you only get from a choice when your city grows is required for certain heroes or allows you to create that hero, etc.).
And I really like the idea someone mentioned that the hero bonus only affects troops - thus making them more like generals.
Many great ideas here - point is something needs to be done about that mid/late game issue.
- Mozo -
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