Gving the Centaurs a try.  Wildlands, Expert/Dense monsters, Expert AI except for Ceto who is Ridiculous.  Same mods as before.  My starting hero is Vaerwynn, one of my favorite heroes and very solid with Merchant and Life magic.  My initial start is on the water and I begin snaking towards a nearby forest.  Iron and a fire shard are visible nearby as early resources.

Faction Notes:

• As I have said before, the +1 ZoC on cities is very interesting.
• My first combat is with a Darkling Shaman who wounds Vini severely.  I choose to lurk in town and summon a pet while healing up.  The sound of a wolf howling when the spell completes is handy, if you know to listen for it.
• Why does Vini cost 0.1 gildar per turn in maintenance?  I didn't notice until I was inspecting the Economy screen to see how much $$$ my two merchants were generating.
• Centaur troops 'Twitchy' trait.  Do you have to be faster than everyone on the other side, or just faster than 'any' attacker, which implies only one of them?  It is also hard to tell if Twitchy is working, since it does not show up in the unit stats.  Is this possible somehow?  Perhaps as a pre-battle buff like the Amarians get or something?  I decide to experiment and try to create some dodging troops, using Twitchy, Acrobat and Lithe.  This allows me to use a spear, wooden shield and some leather armguards.  We'll see how it goes.  Also how does twitchy interact with Impulsive?  If someone on the other side has impulsive will twitchy work, or not?

Misc:

• After scouting around for a while, expansion is impossible without clearing some pretty nasty stuff.  Skaths, Electroalgs in one direction and a Troll Shaman pack in another.  Time to get some troops.
• Season 13 I find Leadanna and recruit her.  Two heroes with merchant?  My money problems are nonexistent and I can actually rush production (a little) which is normally impossible early on.  I have an income of +11.9, amazing.
• Nearby wildlands are the Bindami Fissure, the Arag, and the Pits of Namtur.  The trolls from Arag are extremely aggressive and roam a LOT, very dangerous.

More comments later.  Stuff to do.

I've been playing for about 4 hours of game time. Playing the “q” build. Playing as Living-Stone

When I tried to load the game, after work, it kept crashing. I tried several of my last save games, all with the same result.

When I load a game near the beginning it worked. The funny thing I noticed was that with the games that crashed I did not see the Golems on the faction power list in the top righthand corner. All the other races I met were listed, but not them.

Anyone else have a problem like this?

Worked fine this morning now I can't load.

Thanks.

I was playing with the "Huge and Irregular" map, using the LargeMaps1.1 Mod. I have played several games with this setting and this is the first time I got this error. It's as if something went missing, since none of my saves want to load, all seeming to get stuck just before fully loaded.

The save at the begining of the game, before IO met any other reces worked though.

HF, can you think of any reason that could cause iron/crystal resources to not appear?

EDIT: not completely lacking, but appearing in real small amounts. like two iron mines on large map. This might have something to do with the stamps you introduced in your latest version.

edited above, meanwhile, lucky or unlucky isn't best description (my RNG does really strange things), but I've started the game with cheat mode enabled to check the map immediatelly and after a longer while of searching found two iron map on large map with six players, which is repeatable (I had to stop my frost giant game on huge map after clearing one forth of the map without finidng single mine or crystal crag) - playing stoneage era with armies of 9 units and 5 person per unit of brawlers (138 attack, 10 defense due to lack of metal) isn't very fun past few battles.

A small note, I fucked up the Surgeon Beetle. Instead of lasting 50 turns it will only last 5.

Go to Stormworld_Reliquary/Reliquary.xml and scroll to the bottom. Change these

    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Unit</ModType>
      <Attribute>UnlockUnitAbility</Attribute>
      <StrVal>Reliquary_SurgeonBeetle1</StrVal>
      <Duration>6</Duration>
      <Provides>On Use champion gains trait Surgeon Beetle for 50 turns:

Surgeon Beetle - Champion gains +1 Strategic Health Regeneration and cannot suffer Injuries after falling in combat</Provides>
    </GameModifier>
    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Unit</ModType>
      <Attribute>UnlockUnitAbility</Attribute>
      <StrVal>Reliquary_SurgeonBeetle2</StrVal>
      <Duration>5</Duration>
      <Provides>On the 51th turn, champion can cast spell "Hatch Beetles" and gain 1 more Surgeon Beetle. If this exact turn is missed, the new beetle escapes and cannot be hatched</Provides>
    </GameModifier>

into these

    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Unit</ModType>
      <Attribute>UnlockUnitAbility</Attribute>
      <StrVal>Reliquary_SurgeonBeetle1</StrVal>
      <Duration>51</Duration>
      <Provides>On Use champion gains trait Surgeon Beetle for 50 turns:

Surgeon Beetle - Champion gains +1 Strategic Health Regeneration and cannot suffer Injuries after falling in combat</Provides>
    </GameModifier>
    <GameModifier>
      <ModType>Unit</ModType>
      <Attribute>UnlockUnitAbility</Attribute>
      <StrVal>Reliquary_SurgeonBeetle2</StrVal>
      <Duration>50</Duration>
      <Provides>On the 51th turn, champion can cast spell "Hatch Beetles" and gain 1 more Surgeon Beetle. If this exact turn is missed, the new beetle escapes and cannot be hatched</Provides>
    </GameModifier>

I'll put it in the next release, but it's not critical and it would still be damn annoying so if anyone is starting a game you might as well change it.

Suggestion for Centaur traits:

Take out 'Misogynist', it's kind of funny but not THAT funny, and the bonus is too situational for it to be worth a trait slot.

Replace it with 'Sprinter', +1 movement.  Sprinter allows the Centaurs to get a movement of four, at the cost of a valuable trait slot, something other races are able to achieve through mounts.  Right now the four-legged Centaurs are slower than anybody else's mounted troops, which is just weird.

I still don't know if I would regularly buy it, but it will probably get used while Misogynist never will.  Right now I have been stocking my heavy cavalry with Twitchy, Muscle, and a trait to be named later.  Charge, Bloodthirsty, Fast are a couple I have been fooling with.

Started another Centaur game.

Faction Notes:

• It is annoying that my cavalry is slower than those used by the stupid bipeds.  See my previous post about a suggestion for a new unit trait.

Misc:

• In both of my last two games I started with a Faerie spawn point close by my capital.  In my current game there was a roaming pack of faeries on turn one, and they chased my hero all over the place.  Extremely aggressive and tough mobs to have spawning so close to a player's initial starting point.  Perhaps move them farther away, or at a minimum please not instantly pop out a turn one roamer.  Stuff near a capital city should be things like bear cubs, mites, exiled ogres and solo butchermen, not 50 HP three-packs of vicious Faeries that can kill your sovereign in a single round of ranged fire.  I did finally manage to kill them through an application of Guardian Wind + Nature's Cloak + Arrowguard + Vini + Summoned Naja + Spearmen. 

Ending this game due to v1.1 being released.

Thanks, fixed in next version.

Also going to go through all the hit animations, I saw some wonky stuff.

HF, you're lighting fast with those releases

applaud

It works like the spell that adds fire attack to your sovereign. The bonus is added to all ranged and melee strikes, but it remains its own type of attack (arcane). Some more info about arcane attacks here http://stormworld.wikidot.com/mechanics

HF. Kami death animation. It's so big of a monster, give it some more spectacular die animation. RIght now it just bows and disappears.

ps. is there a way to keep dead bodies on the battlefied?