Fallen Enchantress 0.85 patch (released 2/23/2012)
Features:
+ Imbuing removed from the game. Champions start with the ability to cast
+ Improved performance
+ Added tactical versions of the Burning Blade and Stoneskin spells
+ Reprisal is an ability high level defenders can use to protect a unit, giving it a counterattack and increasing its defense by 1 each time it is attacked
+ Added the Tower of the Witch-Queen, it provides +1 Air and Water power and is required to build the Forge of the Overlord
+ Added the Tower of the sword, it provides +1 Earth and Water power and is required to build the Forge of the Overlord
+ Added the Tower of the Paders, it provides +1 Air and Fire power and is required to build the Forge of the Overlord
+ Added the Forge of the Overlord, it provides +1 Earth and Fire power and is require to cast the Spell of Making
+ Added Waerloga the Dragonlord, though he remains trapped in the Pit of Lost Voices (watch for future updates on this)
+ New Choose Sovereign Screen
+ New Kingdom report screen (displays victory condition information)
+ Tile the player is mousing over is highlighted on the world map
+ Your units path is now displayed
+ The game now ends at 1000 turns (modified by the game pace). Players have the option to continue playing but their score wont be recorded after this point.
+ Caravans as units are removed (they can be auto-created when you form a Trade treaty with another player).
+ Roads are automatically created between your cities when the appropriate techs are know. The roads don't give economic benefits (the techs do though)
+ Techs can unlock automatic roads to your outposts
+ Tactical battle progression doesnt wait for the ending spell particle to play before switching to the next unit (you switch while it is playing)
+ Lots of new sound effects and music
+ Sounds fades out between screen changes
+ Added the Mite unit, pesky little goblin like creatures that come in hordes and provide a good excuse to test out those early weapons
+ Units with bows also have quivers
+ Added the trigger Fear ability (monsters with it hit enemies with fear before combat)
+ Added the trigger Titan’s Breath ability (monsters with it hit enemies with fear before combat)
+ Added Precision II and Precision III abilities (to support future bow changes)
+ Added the Darkling Archer lair
+ Added the Darkling Warlock lair
+ Added the Banished Ogre lair
+ Added the Wilding Archer lair
+ Added the Wilding Hermit lair
+ Added a trade buttong to the equipment window
+ Removed the Amulet of the Eagle
+ Added the Amulet of Flames (craftable, +3 fire attack)
+ Added the Amulet of Frost (craftable, +3 cold attack)
+ Added the Scar Stone (+1 fire damage, craftable, Quendar only)
+ Added the Summoner sovereign background, summoned units start at a higher level and that sovereign gets access to the Summon Shadow Warg spell (Ceresa and Procipinee are summoners)
+ Added the Incineration Staff, Ice Staff, Hailstoen Staff and Hellfire Staff, they have ranged fire and cold attacks and are craftable
+ Added the Warlock sovereign background (+50% spell damage, Magnar is a warlock)
+ Added the Boar Spear as a mid game weapon between the spear and the pike
Bugs:
+ Blizzard, Blight and Escape scrolls no longer consume mana
+ Fixed a crash when saving games
+ Double clicking an improvement in the build list will auto place
+ Fixed issues keeping some sound effects form being played
+ Fixed bug that caused list box selections to not deselect
+ Fixed the Experienced and Veteran abilities to correctly give the free level
+ Fixed all quests that give out champions (so they are correctly champions)
+ Fixed a bug that destroyed cities when sovereigns were killed in battle
+ Fixed an issue that caused cities to dissapear
+ Fixed an issue allowing the Air Elemental Scroll to be used multiple times
+ Letters are no longer consumable
+ Monster recruits wont show up in the design window anymore
+ Fixed an issue keeping scrolls from working on the strategic map
+ Fixed an item keeping strategic spells form using the random modifier ability (for Destiny's gift)
+ All the tiles in your ZoC are now visible
+ Fixed an issue causing the Touch of Entropy spell to trigger twice
+ Pressing D with a unit selected wont bring up the old unit lorebook anymore
+ City defenders arent multiplied when they defend a city
+ Added the ability for spells to permanently kill champions (for steal spirit and infernal contract)
+ Fixed an issue that allowed tactical summons to sometimes survive after the battle
+ Fixed crashes
+ Fixed a significant memory leak in the sound system
+ Fixed an issue with combat rating (where the leader had the groups combat rating instead of his own)
+ Unit won through quests can now have their level specified (so they arent all level 1)
+ Fixed an issue causing multi-tile creatures to be hit multiple times by spells with a radius
+ Fixed bug where if you only have one item in your inventory, and it’s equipped, that selling it didn’t clear the selection area, which let you re-equip the item, and then resell it.
+ Fixed an issues causing the speak to button to be disabled on the foreign relations window
+ Fixed an issue keeping path of governor abilities from showing up
+ Bows correctly make bow noises
+ Fixed quests that give champions
+ King of the Wastes tech now correctly upgrades future monsters
Balance:
+ Late game tech costs reduced dramatically
+ Experienced earned from battle is split among the winning units
+ All craftable magical accessories now have a crystal cost
+ More injuries added (Afraid of Dying, Broken Leg, Hallucinations, Cracked Skull, Concussion and Rotting Wound)
+ Missing Ear injury now gives -10% to dodge
+ Gangrene Hand injury now gives -15% to strength
+ Flesh Wound injury now gives -10% to hit points
+ Chipped Tooth injury now gives a penalty to poison resistance
+ Broken Nose injury now gives -10% to Constitution
+ Blind in One Eye injury now gives -25% to Accuracy
+ Amnesia now gives -25% to earned xp (thanks to Heavenfall for feedback on this and many of the above)
+ Units cant walk on Mountainside
+ More (low level) monsters around starting locations
+ Reduced the cost of upgrading trained units to have better equipment.
+ Health regenerated reduced by 75% when the unit is immobilized
+ Caravan respawn time increased from 3 to 5
+ When a champion dies in battle and he recieves an injury his hit points are healed back to 25% full (to keep cascading deaths from happening)
+ Mid to late game improvement cost increased
+ You need the Path of the Mage to be able to cast Counterspell
+ Chaos and Pandemonium have no positive effects, just different negative effects of different types
+ Reduced the cost of pioneers
+ Fireball damage reduced from 6 (+3 per fire shard) to 4 (+4 per fire shard) and it takes and additonal action to cast
+ Contagion damage increased from 3 (+1 per death shard) to 3 (+3 per death shard) and it takes an additional action to cast
+ Dirge of Ceresa mana cost increased form 24 to 36, it is resistable and the duration damage increased form 3 (+1 per death shard) to 3 (+3 per death shard)
+ Legacy of Serrane faction ability gives +3 diplo each time a caravan reaches its destination
+ Legacy of Serrane faction ability unlocks the Aura of Commerce spell
+ Ignys are weakened but can now breath fire
+ Quests give much better stuff
+ You can upgrade the armor and weapons on most of the trained units
+ Catapults gain 30 Pierce defense and are larger in tactical
+ Base init is doubled (so we can be more granular with bonuses and penalties)
+ Weapons rebalanced at the new init levels
+ Alliance treaties have a 99 season duration
+ Non-aggression treaty duration increased from 33 to 50
+ Chaos and Pandemonium dont have positive effects anymore
+ Impulsive ability requires level 3
+ High level lairs reduced form 10 to 8 levels away from starting points (they werent able to be placed on some maps)
+ Wolf lairs cant be placed on deserts
+ Spider Venom saces are now accessories that you can equip to add poison damage to your attacks
+ A unit can only have 4 accessories equipped at one time
+ Movement increased on a bunch of monster (most go to a base of 3, anything with 4 legs generally has 4)
+ XP is divided by the amount of champions in your army. If you get 500 xp with an army with 1 champion all untis in that army get 500 xp. If you had 2 champions in that army all the units in that army get 250 xp).
+ Bandit Archer camps can spawn bandits
+ Bear lairs have loot
+ Butcherman lairs can spawn butchermen
+ Crag Spawn lairs can spawn crag spawn
+ Darkling Rider lairs can spawn darklings
+ Death Demon lairs can spawn assassin demons
+ Great Wolf lairs can spawn wolves
+ Ravenous Harridan lairs can spawn black widows
+ Rock Spider lairs can produce rock spiderlings
+ Stalker lairs can spawn stalkers
+ Wilding Rider lairs can spawn wildings
+ Capturing a city halves the population (instead of reducing it to 0)
+ Razing a city makes its zoc barren so a new city cant be founded there
+ You cant trade champions anymore
+ Champions choose their path at 4th level (not 2nd)
+ Reduced the metal cost of higher level weapons
+ Traits and items that increase movement are more rare
+ Amulet of Warding train time and defensive bonus reduced
+ Cloak of Shadows no longer gives a defensive bonus
+ Cloak of the Night no longer gives a defensive bonus
+ Darkling Cloak no longer gives a defensive bonus
+ Longstrider boots aren’t craftable anymore
+ Poison Vial is cheaper
+ Ring of Embers now correctly gives fire resistance
+ Ring of Storms now correctly gives cold resistance
+ Reduced Affinity to -10% the mana cost for tactical spells (from -25%)
+ Gamblers strike now has a 50% chance of doing double damage and a 50% chance to miss
+ Reduced the mana cost reduction from the archmage robes, mage robes and adept robes
+ Mantle of Oceans reduces tactical spell cost by 40% instead of 50%
+ Fireball does 4 (+4 per fire shard damage) instead of 6 + 3
+ Fireballs casting time increased from 2 to 3
+ Added a particle effect to growth and giant form
+ Monster player has plenty of mana to work with, be afraid
+ Removed the Bonding Ceremony tech (darkling and wilding camps require adminstration)
+ Removed the Mercenaties tech (mercenary camps require cooperation)
+ Path of the Assassin gives +3 dex, +3 to crits, and +50% to crit damage instead of +6 to dex and +2 strength
+ Path of the Defender gives +3 strength and +3 constitution instead of +6 strength and +2 constitution
+ Path of the Mage gives +3 int instead of +6 int
+ Path of the Warrior gives +3 str and +3 dex instead of +6 str and +2 dex
+ Diplomat gives +30% to trade value instead of +20%
+ Shards give 3 mana instead of 2
+ Min city level placed on most improvements
+ Dragon hide cloak is craftable
+ Ice Warg cloak is craftable
+ Wing of Embers and Ring of the Glacier moved from enchantments to channeling
+ Lightning Hammer is now craftable
+ Burning Axe is now craftable
+ Ice Spear is now craftable
+ Chain chest and greaves give -1 init
+ Plate boots, helm, greaves, chest and gauntlets give -1 init
+ Reduced the defense on leathur cirass from 3 to 2
+ Reduced the defense on leather greaves from 2 to 1
+ Reduced the cost of armor you can buy in stores
+ Tech costs dramatically reduced
+ Reduced the powerful empire ability to +2 str and +2 con (instead of +3 for both)
+ Reduced Rage to +3 str and dex when under 50% hit points (instead of +5)
+ Reduced the Strength ability to +2 str instead of +3
Cosmetic:
+ Quest location icons turn silver if the quest has been started (indicating there is nothing left to do at that spot)
+ Added notes to the tooltip for improvements (for things like being world or faction limited)
+ Fixed so many typos
+ When the monster is killed remaining lair switch to the treasure icon to show that they can be claimed
+ Tooltip for limited units shows how many the player has available
+ Monster dropped loot (pelts, webs, teeth, etc) no longer have a popup
+ We only show 3 units in a group if they are in an army on the main map (so you dont get those stuffed tiles that look like a wandering mosh pit)
+ New terrain graphics
+ New glow on mana shards
AI:
+ Monsters slightly less aggressive
+ Monster wander radius increased when in player territory
+ AI will now surrender late game rather than dragging things out
+ AI armies more aggressive
+ Fixed AI bug where armies with pioneers would not attack no matter what sometimes
+ AI more willing to attack and lose to wear player down if they have sufficient military might
+ Fixed AI bug where sovereign would get stuck on a quest
+ Increased odds of the AI talking smack talk to player about destroying stuff
+ Fixed bug where AI would go into defend mode rather than attack in tactical
+ AI Empires take umbridge if you attack an empire (-3 to relations)
+ Kingdoms get upset if you attack someone early game (-3 to relations)
+ Kingdoms take offense if you attack a kingdom (-3 to relations)
+ Kingdoms get really made if you are a kingdom and attack another kingdom (-3 to relations)
+ AI will improve relations if you have trade routes with it
+ AI manages its tax rate more effectively via an internal credit score system
+ AI trash talks player slightly more
+ AI places a lower priority on shopping for equipment based on how much money it has
+ Fixed AI bug where units would stick around at a rally point too long
+ Fixed AI bug where sovereigns and champions would head back to rally points even if they were powerful
+ Fixed AI bug that prevented the AI from going on quests as often as it should have
+ Fixed AI bug where champions wouldn't attack unless they had overwhelming superiority
+ AI more aggressive about founding new cities further away
+ AI more aggressive about constructing outposts
+ AI uses AI traits to determine what units it will train
+ AI evaluates area threats based on distance and how fast threats can move
+ AI is biased to train units over building improvements during war time depending on what traits it has
+ Fixed AI bug where cities wouldn't train pioneers if they were at war if they didn't have the right AI trait
+ Fixed AI bug where it didn't value magical weaponry correctly (thus only mundane units)
+ Fixed AI bug where it was not valuing combat speed correctly
+ AI less concerned about relative military power in diplomacy until later in the game
+ AI makes more use of AI traits when determining diplomatic relations
+ AI will now cast more offensive strategic spells
+ AI can use Curse City type spells
+ AI can and will cast the Spell of Making if it can
+ AI will try to inform players when it has cast a curse on the player OR cast a very powerful spell
+ AI will interact with players more generally
+ Fixed AI bug where it would ignore cities it knows about simply because they're far away
+ AI is less likely to surrender
+ Unstable, Isolationists and War Monger AI personalities will tend to raze cities they didn't found when conquered
+ Fixed tactical AI bug where it would appear to move and then attack a player which is illegal
+ Fixed tactical AI bug where if units were low on mana they would sometimes skip their move even if they had a mundane attack
+ Increased tactical AI evaluation of ranged offensive spells
+ Increased the target value of ranged units (made AI more likely to go after them)
+ Units that aren't particularly powerful are more likely to stand back and let others fight for them first in tactical battles
+ AI better handles dealing with units with particular types of magic resistances.
+ Changed tactical map choosing algorithm to now look at the number of units going into the map (bigger maps for bigger battles)
Maybe have it give beasts an increased starting level?
That would be ideal.
@mqpiffle and others that are cheering the way the split xp mechanic is implemented: How in the hell can you commend this? It was obviously a blanket change based on the ease of programming! Adding another line to modify how experience is calculated units would have required a new tag for unit xp versus champion xp. Not doing this just comes across as lazy.
They already have tags for units and champions, this is just.. ugh. Jumping up to defend a change because it includes part of what we were looking for but contains a massive, huge, montstrous glaring error due to lazy programming is fanboyish.
Don't get me wrong, many of thes changes above are positive, and I appreciate that effort is being put towards making this game as good as it can be. Things that I don't mention I typically leave implied to be positive (I love that caravans are removed). Many of them require actual playtesting before judgement can be passed.
Numbers as blanket as these do not. If units are not meant to be a part of the reduction in xp from champions, they should not suffer the reduction when champions join their group. This actually reduces our options of using units versus champions, as the only viable route is 1 champion per army now, or all champion armies. The latter being considerable less efficient, but not completely stupid. Seriously that one extra champion would have to provide godlike synergy to be worth halving the xp of all the regular units in the group to be worth it.
Are you really telling me you wouldn't report this as a bug?
Aye ... methinks the blanket nature of this forces people into a stock formation of Armies led by 1 champion apiece.
A slightly more organic approach for each unitclass (Champion and Unit) would be appreciated
Xc = X/(0.7N+0.2n)
Xu = X/(0.4+0.3N+0.3n)
(as an example)
My current impression is that this change is unfun.
While stacking champions is OP, the current system is just a nerf- it feels like there's still no real choice and this also adds in a large amount of early-game tedium to build up spearmen.
The problem is reverting isn't the best solution either- even if I think it's better then the current solution.
Do my equations seem favorable to you?
PS, does anyone else get this bug where you have to scroll up 8 miles to find the thread?
The reason xp is split is to balance champion heavy vs champion light armies. In my experience (though I'm interested to hear the play test results from the community) both methods work well. I don't like your proposal because it allows people to twink their trained units (throw them in an army with a bunch of champions and let them level up fast).
We did exclude armies from the xp division (it is only divided by the amount of champions in your army, not the units in your army) to incent players to want to use trained units with their champions. Otherwise your best bet is to leave your spearmen at home rather than sacrifice your champions precious xp. But I don't want to swing to far the other way and have trained units out leveling your champions as in the scenario you describe.
Although we are always open to new information and can certainly make mistakes please dont assume that our decisions come form lazyness or that people whose opinions differ from yours are fanboys. There are just a lot of differing good ideas with various pros and cons.
Soooooo - Am I reading this correctly? None of the abilities were showing up before?
No wonder it was so useless.
If the mouseover is correct ... "Path of the Serpent" is unfortunately quite useless
(I really like the lore of it/feel of it ... but I don't see any benefit, since anyone can recruit naja/ophidian/drakes)
I dont recall when I fixed this (i thought i did it in time for 0.77) but only civs with Serpents pact can build camps on the Naja, Drake and Ophidian lairs. I just tried a test game and it worked.
Hmmm.... Other factions may be able to conquer the camps Umber built and start recruiting the monsters because of it. I'll check it out.
What about Mazzy?
They built a drake and were Yithril.
and in 0.77 I built a drake as well (with a custom non-serpent faction)
I could do it in .77 with any faction for 100 gold.
Maybe these lairs should cost a heavy amount of diplomatic capital, but with a huge discount for Serpent's Pact, and their trained monsters start with +1 level.
On Derek's reasoning for the champion change: I understand why it was done, I can see the logic. I also suspect that I might be whining a bit because nerfs are unfun even when they're needed. That said, I did suggest an alternative idea that I think would balance it out or at least provide a counter-strategy in another thread.
If this system is to be kept: I would suggest one tweak. Make the XP penalty a function of level, so it impacts higher level heroes more then lower levels
(Maybe level 1's shouldn't be impacted, level 2 25% impact, level 3 half impact, level 4 75% impact, level 5 full impact?).
I think this would solve the biggest problem with the system, which is the early game being a bit too slow, yet you'd stop the juggernauting of multiple high-level stacks of doom, once they hit level 5 you'd want to split them up.
My real concern is wiidlands becoming too difficult, but they're supposed to be, so it's probably WAD.
I'm overjoyed to see the game more challenging now, and the AI putting up an actual fight. I'm very happy there's an actual reason to build armies now, whereas before there was none. But something is going to have to be done to keep the early game from grinding to a halt.
I recognize the Fall From Heaven influence, where you start off helpless and have to run screaming from everything in sight, and can't stay alive in order to earn xp, until you can finally tech up to a point where you can field some more durable troops, or at least spam entire stacks as cannon fodder in order for your heroes to scrape out a level or get past a tough encounter. I'm ok with that in principle, providing you can actually pull off the later. Theres got to be an answer for any situation.
The problem is, the game isnt really designed to be able to spam armies in the early game. Unit upkeep is prohibitively expensive when a single gildar either way can drive you into the red, and teching up to something durable enough to survive with minimal HP at level 1 could easily take until mid-game. The starting game units are worthless, even in numbers. They arent worth losing the production time in your only city.
Taking the XP penalty for grouping your champs together might get you by a few early easy battles, but it wont level them up fast enough to deal with anything other than the gimme spawns you find in your starting area.
Through two starts on Normal difficulty, I've found myself bottled up, with no real way to advance past (now much more formidable) monster chokepoints because there was no way to advance or expand until they were dealt with. The available champs were too gimpy without anything to level up on, and I couldn't field enough troop spam without rapidly bankrupting myself...assuming I took the 50-60 turns it would take to produce enough of them, at the expense of growing or teching up, and handing the game to the AI. Saving up enough mana to terraform my way out of the bottle would have likewise taken half the game.
Now, Im a masochist, and pretty sure I could make a specific Sovereign build to deal with it. I definitely prefer it to effortlessly steamrolling the entire map in v77. But I don't think most people want that kind of challenge on "Normal" difficulty, or want to feel like there's only one viable Sov build.
I agree there was a real need to contrive some reason to actually build armies, when Champions were so much more powerful and efficient. But If Champs are going to be punished for grouping up now, and forced to rely on armies early on, then those early armies need to be either cheaper and faster to build/upkeep, or more durable out of the box.
It is still entirely possible to 'twink' units with a single champion. One high level spellcaster (contagnation being a good spell example) could accomplish this without the need of multiple champions in the stack. Not to mention you could easily twink in the reverse, by dropping a low level champion with a big group of units.. Not splitting experience with regular units is not something I would have voted for, but the effects of this are not readily apparent and I will reserve judgement.
However, with all due respect, I don't think the way this change was implemented was debated or it's effects analyzed. In the event that you used regular unit armies they would already outlevel champions by the nature of the xp calculations. Simply due to those champions not being present in the army for the player to see this effect doesn't seem like a good reason to reduce their gained experience.
However lets look at the issue from another perspective: Is the addition of one additional champion to the group such a major imbalance that the other 3-7 units need their growth cut in half?
This I can certainly agree with. Taxes simply do not give enough gold to support your armies. Instead you are FORCED to sell off your quest items just so you can keep the economy running ... wait what?
In the first few turns, running at 0% slider is a no brainer ... but once you actually run out of gold, there is no economic way to get more gold. These are both problems caused by taxation being relatively worthless. (if it was completely worthless I wouldn't be running Max taxes right now ... but hey. I want to keep my Mage's robes and I'm down to 30 gold
Have to Disagree with this. I've found that I have *too much* production. Sure, early on production is kinda weak, but a few more cities and 20 turns later ... you run out of anything good to build other than units. Units you can't pay for.
Sure its a challenge, and that can be fun in of itself, but after the Champion nerf .... there is no reason to buy new Champions unless they have the Merchant trait. Best to use the money you do have on 0 taxes research and/or unit upkeep.
As far as the STRENGTH of crappy peasant soldiers .... I made a unit so weak I named it CANNON FODDER ... and with my civ traits I can make 1 Cannon Fodder per turn in almost any city.
5 cannon fodders + my sov can kill enough from the wildlands to level my Sov a bit, which is good
once I had groups of Cannon Fodder (instead of parties) they started to REALLY shine ... meanwhile my back-cities, with NO BUILDINGS to build (other than worthless barracks being worthless, likely due to my civ traits) ... I have them set to build groups of 'elites' to eventually join in with the Fodders.
If you have multiple cities, you are already out of the hole I was speaking of. I was bottled up with a single city, and no real way to settle more or invade. Monster camps can be potent barriers now, depending on the terrain, and I was unable to level my Champs enough to invade, even if I wanted to group them together to punch through something at an XP loss.
Even on a 4 production tile, with a workshop, leather clad groups (so they could survive at least a single hit) took far too long to produce in the bulk required to punch through or invade. And all those turns of production would have been lost when the units are obliterated by even a mauling bear cub. Even starting milita took 4 turns a pop, and to produce those in the numbers you'd need to be worth anything, you.d be bankrupted by upkeep, and put into an insurmountable hole from all the lost production.
I dont mind being forced to rely on trained troops (although I wish the game made you actually *want* to use them based on their own appeal, rather than being whipped into doing so), but they should be feasible in any situation if that's the case, to keep the game from grinding to a halt early on.
Well, if you are blocked behind monsters that 1 hit your leather troops ... then either you are on a small map or GG man. (on a small map 1 city empires might still be competitive even after investing to destroy the monsters)
Personally if I was in that situtation, I would build TONS of crappy troops and throw stacks of them at the enemy (and add a caster to the next stack once I have enough mana).
Trust me ... those big guys? they tend to miss, a LOT. Even on my -dex Cannon Fodders. Just build the useful buildings first, and then spam the weakest possible soldier you can build. Trust me, it WILL work
-> If you have enough spare gold, just run 0% slider to build the cannon fodder faster
-> if you don't have enough gold, sell ALL your items and repeat. You can get new items once you break free from cage.
Hmm, it'd probably be good if there was a +X gold building that you could only build once ... this and other 'national wonders' would help a dude in your situation out. (being stuck with 1 city)
I think the problem is that we are getting too many snaked peninsulas and not enough open land at our starting locations. I am currently running a game where the poor Altar started not 8 tiles away from me. Those dicks used their far better starting city to block that side of the peninsula and forced me to scout the swampy uncolonizable side. I set up some outposts and then conquered Athica. It wasn't pretty, but it was either that or starting a new game. If we weren't both stuck in the corner right next to each other, things might have been different. I renamed the city Lynchburg....
I only play large maps.
How much have you actually played the new build? Monsters are much more lethal now. The tac AI pursues your vulnerable units mercilessly, they use special abilities liberally, and initiative changes seem to give some creatures many more attacks than they had. Even bear cubs are lethal to low level characters. Mobs of Mites, which are presumably there to level up your low level characters on, are dangerous in large groups, and give hardly any XP.
I was corralled by a rapid fire Air elemental spamming titans breath, and a Cave bear army. It wasnt an insurmountable situation, but the game had slowed to a stop. It was either sit around and wait to rack up troop spam with prohibitive upkeep, or sit around and wait for enough mana to accumulate at 2-3 mana per round to terraform a path through a mountain range. Either would have taken long enough to effectively surrender the game. There were no suitable enemies to level heroes on.
Im not saying it happens all the time. I'm saying that the potential for it to happen at all is problematic. I'm not complaining about the challenge, but the game grinding to a halt is no fun. You dont want to just stand around twiddling your thumbs until you can cheese your way into getting a game going again.
A big issue I'm running into with 0.85 is the experience. It's too heavily biased towards the leader of the enemy side.
Without more experience, you level up slowly.
That's what 0.86 (tomorrow) will address.
I can assure you, there's a huge difference when facing a cave bear as a level 4 champion versus level 2.
Ah ... yea. Cave Bears and Trolls will fall to my strat, but not this.
part of my point though, is that when facing monsters of high power, wasting production on defense is worthless.
Better to keep weak units with spears grouped together, and even if they all die in one hit each, you might just end up killing the enemy. (buffs and debuffs always help)
defense is only worthwhile when either
1. Stacking it like mad on a crazy champion
2. Fighting against smaller mobs
or
3. Fighting against other Faction's armies
And yes, I feel that the weaker mobs don't give enough xp.
I can see why balancing game play is such a problem.
.77 was such a wonderful rush - loot drops, ugrades, my merry band of champions steamrolloing all who stood in our way!
Great pace & fun, but alas no real challenge.
The AI in .85 is certainly a challenge, but you neutered my Sov & champions.
Just give me back a little more of that .77 adrenaline.
I just feel that weak things don't give enough exp ... le sad
(might give back a bit of that 0.77 adrenaline as you describe. And yes, an unstoppable Steamrolling freighttrain of a merry band of heroes (for me usually 2 heroes + mobs) ... was certainly fun :3)
Yes, thank you Brad, that's precisely what Im talking about. Champions needed to level more slowly, lets face it. It was pretty ridiculous. And we definitely needed a reason to train armies, if they were going to be in the game at all.
But it is currently possible, depending on the terrain of your starting location, to fall into sort of a trap early on where you stall out, unable to raise your heroes out of starting gimp levels in a timely manner, fenced in by too many dangerous enemies, and a faction AI that seems to actually notice when you're walking near its territory now. If you take too long to get to level 4-5, the game can screech to a halt while you try to catch up without an easy means of doing so. Level 4-5 is a world of difference from level 1-3. Meanwhile, the AI is advancing, and sucking up all the goodie huts.
I had a lone bear cub maul my first champion recruit for 5 consecutive hits, and kill her in a single round. I laughed. Then I cried.
Not a problem when your durable Champs could easily work together. Now the slack is supposed to be taken up by relying on fragile trained units, but I'm not certain if it's really practical or financially feasible to hook my starting 2-3 champions up with the kind of trained armies they'd need to be competitive on an individual basis at those lowest levels. Champs can still team up to get by low level encounters, but that contributes to the viscous cycle, keeping them from leveling up fast enough to deal with the upcoming dangers. They certainly cant operate autonomously with city militia that last a single combat, yet still consume 4 turns of production and can put your economy into the red when your income is between 1-2 gld a turn.
It's not a matter of needing a stack of disposable army units to get through a a single tough encounter. Its a matter of needing those fragile and costly units to get through *most* of the encounters when you're just starting out, if you cant rely on other champs without gimping yourself.
Again, thumbs up for increased challenge, more aggressive AI, and having to think your way through touch obstacles. Thumbs down for having your game effectively stop for any reason, especially early on. The game suffers greatly when you are not adventuring.
yes, currently it is not financially feasable to BOTH
1. recruit extra champions
and
2. maintain an army for each champion
(at the same time)
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