We did a lot of work on the AI this week (and by we, I mean Brad) and made some significant changes. I even had to ask Brad to tone down the aggressiveness based on a game where I got dragged down and beat like the Goonie kids, if they'd accidently wandered into the Hellraiser movies*.
But the trouble with testing the AI in a game that contains as many moving parts as FE is that it can be very situational. It also has a lot to do with balance. Some abilites are to good, some are to weak and a human is always better a figuring out how to exploit them than an AI player. Some items may randomly swing the game ot much (if you get a berserkers axe in the first 20 turns, etc).
I can only play a limited amount of games per week, but if I can get feedback from you folks we can start to learn form that experience and figure out what is keeping the AI from being competitive. I would love to get the following from anyone who is interested.
1. General feedback on if you felt the monsters were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).
2. General feedback on if you felt the AI players were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).
3. What difficulty did you play on?
4. What faction/sovereign did you play (if you made a custom sovereigns, what traits did you pick)?
5. If you think the AI was too easy, what did you do to lead to your success (did you outfit your soveriegn in leather armor, find a good sword and then single handidly kill everyone, did you start producing an endless stream of spearmen and destroy with your armies, did you learn fireball and use it to destroy the world)?
6. Attach a save game at the point where you believe you have the game beat so we can check it out. A save at the tipping point, where you believe you have the game won and have to play it out is more useful than one where the opponents are all crushed because it allows us to see exactly what is going on when the AI loses. If you get to a point where yo don't feel a threat from the AI anymore thats a good point to get a save.
Thanks,
Derek
* If you weren't born in an era where killing a duck with a three pixel long sword wasn't awesome then please replace the above mixed analogy with "beat like Justin Bieber, if he'd accidently wandered into one of the Saw movies."
1. God, yes. But a good threat! So much fun to play with the monsters. I would like the bandits to spawn a little less frequently (I had 3 camps blocking all 3 ways from my city to the rest of the world) but they were dealt with rather quickly, so it wouldn't be a major issue either way.
2. Fairly low difficulty on a huge world, so I only met Gilden and Pariden. Pariden had the annoying habit of running around without a city for the first 100 or so turns, so they are mostly out of it now. Gilden has been expanding quickly and has already begun to wage war in Curgen's Tomb, much more effectively than I.
3. Easy
4. Amaca - traits emphasized were Research (the one that gives +10% research) and Tarthian longbows.
5. Early on, I got a good champion and found an item that lets me cast Blindness on everyone, while she has slow. We started near 3 shards and quickly found 2 more just around a nearby mountain, and my Sovereign had the mana-generating bonus, so we had a ton of mana to play with. Enchantments were thrown around almost constantly, my main army had a ton of buffs, my main city had a ton of buffs. It was around then that I managed to generate 30 gold per turn on 0% taxation.
6. Still working on it <:
Hi
Good work, i think it is coming along well. I enjoyed this game although it is still a bit buggy (but it is beta)
1. The monster threat was hard (i think they were a little too aggressive) but do able. The spawning was good, but did make it tough at the beginning, since i had a couple of Drakes that were spawning stuff, i couldn't kill the Drakes and the small Drakes took out my second city a couple of times. The real problem was that losing cities early makes the game very hard when the nine tiles around the city become wasteland. I would strongly suggest that if a city is lost to monsters then the tiles do not get destroyed.
2. I though the AI was quite good. It is better than it was and generally it did alright. But as you can see from the saves, there is no way i should have won. Altar was on 600 power and had 13 settlements. I was on 175 power and had three (although only 2 were any good). and yet i went through Altar very easily with two stacks. Mostly this was because hardly any of his troops had armor, and the computer doesn't seem to get the importance of leveling troops. ( couple of the guys i had, had 275 hit points, which is a lot).
3. Challenging
4. Gilden, medium map, 6 players: me, Alter and the rest were Empire.
5. I did notice Magnars sov get stuck for quite a while in one place. Altar had a big stack of Pioneers sat there, but generally the AI did OK. I think the default for troops should be that they can upgrade weapons and armor. Also Altar seemed pretty lucky with the monsters, quite few did not attack him. But they all went after me, especially the big winter guy who decided to destroy most of the cities that i took from Altar. That did feel a little unfair (to say the least!!) and explains why so much of the map at the end is wasteland.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gy4sfledzyx60g6/Is%20it%20Won.EleSav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c21dfsicc364gpc/Yes%20its%20won.EleSav
Ok, I played another game on Challenging, large world as Kraxis.
Great gameE mind you, I got crushed by the Gilden in the end, but it was a legitimate crushing. It didn't feel cheesed, just out played.
The main issue to start was a nasty hunter spider spawn that was south of my starting city. I dropped a second city...delayed because of the roaming spider groups that came from that spawn, and the city grew fast and was a strong second city. however, I have to stay near it and continually defend, and hordes of spiders would come up and attack my city every so often. This, ultimately, gimped me.
However, as the game progressed, two factions, Tarth and Gilden, started roaming around me, settling and then declared war. My mistake? I turtled up in my cities, which allowed them both to settle all around me. Finally, , and it was beautiful, Gilden came with two stacks to my capital, one with his two heroes and three spearment. I beat them with 2 HP left on my hero. But I knew it already. The other stack was waiting right next to my city and immediately attacked. 5 stacks of spearmen. They then immediately moved down my roads to my southern town and took it.
I should have attacked their small wandering units, especially the pioneers. I should have declared war. And I love it! Also, I should have left the southern spider laid area alone, and gone north and built my second city there. That is where Gilden settled and crushed me from.
edit: I used to own pretty easily on Challenging, and this is two games I have been crushed in, the first by a wandering umberdroth at turn 70ish, and now, by a pain in the rear monster pit, and some scheming AI Sovs. It can be sometimes frustrating, but the monsters seem right. It feels like a dangeerous world, and I need to start thinking a lot more about what I attack, when, do I stay and defend, how quickly do I build an army? Good work!
I agree with you 100%. This shouldn't be a game of "lets see if the player notices that someone is sneaking across his land this turn!". AI should have to ask permission to cross. The only other thing I think you can do is fill a bottlekneck with cheap slaves (as magnar).
Played on Hard, with a medium map, dense monsters, magic and resources, fast pacing.
Well, I actually won a game. That makes a change - normally I stop playing long before the end due to there not being any challenge.
Accidentally won via the quest of mastery - there were some dragons to kill, and my heroes did just fine, although it would have been an easier fight had I had mana available for it.
I was playing Pariden with a channeler with beast mastery. Some of the key stages seem to be about taming larger and larger spiders - getting one with 140~ hp seemed very nice, and said spider survived all game.
The ability to create outposts with a spell was very key to this game - there were stages where I had 5+ of each shard.
At some point, Altar declared war on me, and destroyed a lot of my outposts, although I was taking one to two cities from him per turn. This process was interrupted by accidentally winning with the quest victory.
Playing the game on hardest (ridicules) with all the options being on norm.
Unsurprisingly, I failed to beat the game. This was done due to two factors:
1) Player units (computer) grant a very small amount of exp. Beating on an earth elemental is easier, and probably give a better exp reward than a small army of mediocre units. I am not sure if it's intended, but the whole feeling is that it's way harder to level champions compared to earlier versions.
2) Computer spams units like there's no tomorrow... Just because I crushed 5 stacks of 5 units each, doesn't mean the 10th one won't start killing my units. This is probably due to difficulty, and the reason I didn't test the easier settings.
Also, a couple of notes which were strange, and probably are bugs:
Certain monsters (mostly drakes) ignore my settlements... until 50+ turns when they decide to attack them, for no reason at all. A bit more consistency for all the monsters will be nice.
Unit stacking- It's quiet annoying killing a stack of monsters, only to find there are more stacks below it. I've had to attack the same tile 3 times in order to clean it from monsters once.
Turns not ending- A few times I pressed the end turn (or it was autopressed? not sure) and the game got stuck. While everything was viable (I could cast spells on enemy units), I couldn't end my turn (grayed out). Saving and loading fixed it, though.
I have noticed that when the end turn doesnt work, its usually because some background AI process is running. Wait half a min and suddenly you can move on.
The Ai is kicking my ass, early game on many of the games I have played. Most recent playing Altir , war was declared by 5 factions on me before 100 turns on EASY, you read that right EASY. I like a good challenge but If I wanted to have no fun and feel pain I would just smash my hand with a hammer. Other wise I think things are coming along nicely !!
I think I found my problem, Autoplay still does not make the best choices for you. New game I am playing, large map all factions, seems to be going much better so far
I played a Challenging game as Pariden, large map, dense everything, and beat the smack out of this build. Arcane Monolith's are awesome, and are the lazy player's way of expanding. with that said had a lot of fun with it. Neither the monsters or AI felt very challenging though, maybe because of how I spammed Arcane Monoliths and cleared monsters.
However, I next I played a tiny map 1v1 as Kraxis... against Gilden. Hard difficulty, dense everything, and let me tell you... the one opponent focusing on me is a whole different ballgame than a map loaded with a bunch of AI players duking it out. I tried to rush him early but honestly got pwned by monsters on the way... and then the monsters coming to attack my homeland made me beeline back to base. In the meantime Gilden recovered from early rush and is on the offensive. I haven't been this challenged in a long time. Game ain't over yet.
I'm really curious how a 1v1 on a large map on ridiculous would turn out. Brad's one faction AI free to focus on the player... will have to give that a go if I somehow win this hard game on a tiny map.
Really enjoying this build! Haven't come across the random Umberdroth or Drake roflstomping my areas yet.
I've just returned to elemental after playing Wom for a couple of weeks then uninstalling it. I've been curious about the direction FE has taken so I decided to try out the beta to see how I liked it. I started with beta three and have played a bit with .913. I've only had time to play a couple of quick games with .913 so far but here is my feedback for what it's worth.
1) Monsters felt about right to me. There were weak ones in the immediate vicinity of my starting area and then stronger ones farther out. Perhaps more of a "medium" layer would be perfect but all in all I thought the monster distribution was good. The easy monsters were easy to clear and the hard ones tended to stop progress/expansion until I was strong enough to clear em.
2) AI players were only a threat in the sense that they came after me from multiple directions once they declared war. Thier armies weren't that difficult to kill but I had to pay attention to them destroying all my resources and cities.
3) Played on hard difficulty
4) Played 2 games so far in .913. First game was Gilden, summoner (just cause I wanted to try it out) large map, random map type moderate everything. Took water and earth level two so I could get the summon elemental spells from both spell lines. Can't remember the other settings. In the second game I played with the following settings:
Custom faction (Spartans), adepts, enchaters, flesh bound tome, no ranged weapons, Tarth race
Custom Soveriegn - earth disciple, water disciple, summoner, attunement and brilliant, weakness=cruel
Map - large, random map type
Options - Hard difficulty, normal pacing, moderate everything, 9 opponents
5) In my first game as Gilden I benefitted from a good starting location in the top corner which only allowed enemy AI's to come at me from one direction so I didn't have to worry much about defending my cities/resources from multiple directions. As a result, it was pretty easy to clear my territory with my summoned units and defeat enemy threats once they did declare war. I could then comfortably progress up the research tree to make some stronger units and them take my enemies cities. The terrain must have been mountainous which made the game easier since enemies could only approach from certain directions. I stopped playing after awhile because I seemed to have a pretty big lead in the power rankings over the next most powerful kingdom (Pariden) and I wanted to try another combination
In the second game I planned on being a summoner again so that I could get the shadow warg spell which would effectively give me two troops per battle if necassary early on without me having to train any troops in my cities. I took earth and water for the elemental summon spells as I leveled up to add to my summoned army. Took adepts so that I could immediately start harvesting shards to add to my mana supply, took enchaters so that I could capture resources using the arcane monolith spell so that I wouldn't have to use production lines to produce pioneers, and took flesh bound tome specifically for the Cull the Weak spell which I planned to use to build up my mona supply and heal myself during battle by sacrificing my summoned units. I also took cruel to give myself an extra point for picking traits and because I planned on not hiring any other hero's (ay least at the beginnig) and going at it with just my soverign and summoned unit stack.
In this game I found that my experience with monsters was pretty much the same as the first game. The easy monsters were easy to handle and clear and then as I got further out I encountered the odd "medium" monster and then the strong ones which stopped my progress until I was strong enough to take em on (basically whenever I got to level four earth and gained the summon earth elemental spell). On thing that almost screwed me was the cull the weak spell. In the description it says that it gives you 40 mana and life but the description is either wrong or the spell is bugged because whenever i tried it, i got the mana but not the health which almost killed me during a battle or two before I realised that. What was great about this spell as a summoner and what may make it overpowered is that it is a great way to get mana built up very quickly. Summoning a shadow warg during battle only costs you 22 mana but sacrificeing it gives you 40 so you end up with a net gain of 18 mana. Once I got the summon ice elemental spell, it only cost me 15 mana to summon it during tactical battles and you get 40 for sacrificeing it, a net gain of 25 mana. By summoning creatures and then sacrificing them before the end of tactical battles, my mana pool was always bigger after battles then before and grew very quickly.
With the AI I found the same kind of thing as with my first game. The armies that were thrown at me weren't that hard to defeat but they came at me from many directions. As the map in the second game was much more open than the first game, I found that my initial rapid expansion with arcane monoliths were getting destroyed and my one stack wasn't enough to defend everything. So armies not hard to defeat but they threatened my cities/resources which prevented expansion without dedicating resources to train garrisons. The solution I found may be a bit of an exploit using the cull the weak spell. I ended up training alot of pioneers (the unit that took the least time to train), and sending them into battle with my soverign and elemental. Once in battle I would immidiately use cull the weak on all pioneers to build up a huge mana supply quickly and then after the battle I would use my level 3 earth - raise mountains spell to erect a wall of mountains around my territory so that enemies could only come at me from one direction. This has allowed me to eliminate threats to my cities and resources from multidirectional enemy attack and still only use one (or two at the most), stack of units to defeat enemies and expand my empire. The game is on season 189 and I'm third in the power rankings and quite sure that I can now comfortably win now that I don't have to worry about attack from multiple directions.
6) Unfortunately I don't know how to do that
Have a good day and keep up the good work
Hmm, didn't know you could do this, but it sounds like a bug. I don't think it should be allowed on summons?
Just got leveled by an Umberdroth that the sneaky AI scouts activated near my capital. Did even have a chance to build a second settlement. On normal (default) settings getting repeatedly creamed by monsters. AI empires seem to do okay, most of the time they are large in size than my own, when looking at population and number of settlements. The strong monsters (Umberdroths, Fell Dragon yep saw Verga bite the dust challenging one of these early although not permanently slain) need to be placed on the map far away from starting locations.
Notice the following if you cancel building a sawmll the forest is permanently destroyed so you cannot build again, did not play long enough to see if saw mill would be in que if forest appeared.
Custom sovereigns have same issue as E WoM were after quiting and starting new game appear as headless and shirtless.
Have given up on playing custom Soveriegn with Capitar (no longer supported/balanced) not sure if it is true but seems like pop growth really slow. Will have to try Umber to see if same. Granted this is observation only have not gone with hard data. Granted I don't seem to be very good at this game right now.
I think the fact that you can summon both strategically AND tactically is overpowered. You effectively get two tactical battle units for every new summon creature spell you get. This can make the early game especially easy (assumeing you have enough mana to do it) when you get two shadow wargs per tactical battle right away with one leveling up to boot. Later if you get summon ice elemental, you get two ice elementals per tactical battle plus two wargs if you want em. And if you get summon earth elemental relatively early you are laughing. Those guys are tough (Although I admit I love having two of those suckers in a tactical battle if needed hehe).
Yeah, I agree, it does seem like you should have one or the other, a tactical summon or a strategical summon, not both. I rampaged as well through a few opponents with the ability to have 2 fire elementals.
Yeah, this is really annoying, all their abilities seem to disappear too.
I played on normal and I thought the world was too aggressive. It is quite frustrating losing cities to crag armies and umber-beasts. It takes so long to research decent troops upgrades and to actually build the decent troops to protect cities that for most of the first hundreds of turns it is all sovereign and heroes who can't cover the distance between cities nearly fast enough. This period takes too long and is frustrating.
Slow leveling (why? this is the most fun), slow tech, slow movement. The pieces of a great fun game are there but I am not a fan of the pacing.
Hello, figured I would chime in a bit. It is late so apologies if this is a tad scattered.
The game's pacing and feedback are its most glaring issues. The pacing is incredibly stretched out, and yet the gameworld always fills up with outpost/city spam all too quickly anyway. In turn, you have this sense at the beginning that there is a big, scary environment out there, but a short while later it is painted in borderlands. Pioneers should be some of the most expensive early-game units, a la Civ's settlers/workers, instead they're some of the easiest to produce. It is a gameplay fault that affects the game literally from the beginning and infects it right to the end. There is no sense of exploration, of slow expansion. And the game tries to feel epic otherwise-because everything else can take ages to get going. Techs take a long time to be learned, and yet they don't produce much individually; the response/return on science-techs is always a trickle, a drip-drip into a bigger pool, if that makes sense. Buildings take ages to build as well, to go along with the science-rate... In turn, the player is often left middling about, which is bad. You never want a player to be wondering what to actually do, and that is often the case in this game.
Additional gameplay hang-ups:
- Non-huge monsters should not raze cities. Outposts should repel non-huge monsters at the border. There should be a sense of agency within your civilization; that there are people who live within it, not just inside the walls of your towns. You should feel safe inside your borders from the wilderness of the outside world, but not from the big-bads, if that makes sense. When you send pioneers out it should be as an expensive voyage into a dangerous, untamed world; not the lame, scurrying land grab it currently is thanks to the cheapness of expansion.
- Cities should be difficult to take. Invaders should start far away on the battlemap and face archers and maybe even guard towers.
- What's the point of the tech tree's structure as it currently stands? You can tech military and still spam cities. Someone should try playing around with a Civ-styled tech tree. The current one is not good, IMO. The science kind of plods along in chunks, and you never complete a tech and get a sense of return on it. Perhaps look into condensing the trees; putting techs together and increasing costs. The tech tree is chaotic and mindless right now. Civilization had the "ages" to help shape its tech-trees -- that gradual advance from, for example, "Classical Era" to "Medieval Era," wherein you could immediately see the changes and what was going on. Visible feedback. None of that gameplay sense exists in this game at the moment.
There are other issues, but I am too tired to list them out. I feel like these above are some of the biggest problems right now, though. Otherwise the game has a lot of promise and it is enjoyable to play in its current state, it just needs improvement and sharpening.
Have played the start of two games now in 0.913 and the AI is much stronger. I've been at war with everyone all the time and that has been no cake walk to defend all edges of my kingdom.
The political relations seem set a bit too high though, it is always asking for massive amounts of gold for trade and tech packs which should be much lower you'd think so that both sides would enter into them for mutual benefits, or the economy needs to be boosted you can't ask for 400 gold and only be making 11 a turn same with lvl 7 & 9 champions recruit costs. No one is recruiting them as they cost 800-1600 gold so you'd have to play for days to get one and by then the game would be mostly completed. Can hero recruit be modified too to cost multiples with out the tech and the tech decreases the hiring cost maybe 2-4-8 or something then the 1600 gold champion would be 200ish?
The AI monsters are aggressive and impressive. Umbroth are maybe a little too powerful, I had one spawn burn down 3 cities before I caught up with it. If their map moves are limited to 1 square that would help this a little too as I don't see why they need to travel faster than your troops can, or don't benefit from roads?
One issue I have found is the Drake camps disappear now one defeat and the drakes can no longer be built. unless this was a 0.913 change?
Version: The latest 913 (somthing) Downloaded this version on Sunday. Two days ago.
Played my Custom Soverign
Opponets - All the Soverigns
Map: Large
Difficulty Level: Challanging
AI for the neutral monsters a lot better. I actully fear for my nations life (good thing)
AI Other Soverigns - Better than before but still a push over and they are not aggressive enough.
Neuteral AI rarly attackes the AI Soverigns (which is bad)
Tactical Battles - Every tactical battle I have played in this version stops at one point during the battle and will not go pass that. I have to hit the Auto Resolve button to complete the battle. This has never happend in the other beta versions. Started 3 more games and had same issue.
1) I don't find monsters challenging once the early->mid game transition comes. Strong monsters should stay challenging in the late game, if the focus of the game is really about fighting the environment. As it is now, a sovereign and 3 leather clad, boarspear-armed, 5-soldiers units with traits will kill any monster save the wildland bosses with minimal to no losses.
The only thing monster achieve is to make expansion very difficult until I can reliably produce the aforementioned groups, which in itself is not a bad idea. Having to clear fertile lands to settle them, at great cost, is an interesting game mechanics. Unfortunately, the AI doesn't obey this rule, which forces the player to expand regardless of the presence of monsters. It's really frustrating. If the player needs to work on clearing new settlement areas before he can expand, so should the AI.
Late game monsters need a major increase in power if they are to be a challenge past leather/chain and boarspears, (but shouldn't be 'everywhere' so that some early/mid-game expansion is possible).
2) On challenging, the AI player is way behind. It's really helped by not having to deal with monsters the way humans do, but even though it has more resources and cities, its army management, hero management and spell use are just not cutting it. It's easy to build an army the AI won't be able to kill.
The AI needs to start using 'combined arms' and a general, consistent research, hero leveling and army building strategy. It needs to use armors on some troops. If it goes for quantity over quality with masses of spearmen, it should research army size and group size better. And even then, sticking with early spears won't work forever - at the late chainmail era, cheap units should wear a bit of leather and wield boarspears.
3)I played on challenging.
4)I played Gilden. By the way, either Gilden's powers are too strong, or other factions' are sometimes too weak. Probably a bit of both. +25% armor and "2 bandits escort the sovereign at the beginning" are not in the same zip code, or even on the same planet.
5)I crushed the AI by using better army composition. Sure, I'm playing Gilden, they're somewhat overpowered when it comes to regular armies. But that's not the only point. I wasn't even building my armies that well; I was just doing the bare minimum: since the AI is coming at me with weak, unclad units and isn't massing them appropriately, all I need to do is protect my soldiers well so I can take the AI's armies one by one with minimal attrition. If the AI was better at unit choice and army composition, I might have to actually THINK about what soldiers I want to use.
I don't even have to build lots of cities. 2 are enough, as long as they produce a bit of money. Then I build some early armored troops, I cast stoneskin, and I win the game.
6)At work currently, no savegame .
I'm a long way from winning my first game on 0.913, challenging, large map (well, my second, but the first had a horrible setup and the monsters finished me early on), but answering what I can:
1. The monsters are a definite threat to me, strangling my expansion. They're less of a threat to the AI players - sometimes attacking but otherwise not. Altaria managed to establish a town in a place I had previously lost one to some Knights of Asok, and another next to a spider mob, both of which ignored them. They're continuing to be legitimately tough into what I guess is my mid-game. A Shrill Lord has been harassing one of my cities by sending out small shrill mobs, but thankfully hasn't become active itself.
2. Several AI are playing well. Kraxis is playing very aggressively (including breaking a non-aggression pact established after our first war, which I didn't know was possible). I am gradually winning, having swiftly beaten their much less threatening Resoln allies. Altaria are the most successful, spamming cities in a way that I haven't been able to - in part because of being invisible to the monsters. Someone has gobbled up all the low-level Kingdom heroes, I don't know if it's other Kingdoms hiring them or Empires killing them. I don't know about other factions but Kraxis is building tough troops to launch their major attacks while using lone heroes to harass my outposts. I'm playing Gilden so my own troops are faily hard, thankfully, given my lack of heroes. All 8 main factions are playing, I have yet to meet Yithril and haven't had much to do with Magnar or Tarth yet but all the others seem to be doing pretty well - even Resoln, who could stand the loss of three of their cities as they were spamming settlements and had places to fall back to after we signed our peace treaty. It's going to be a long, involved game for a while yet
3. Challenging.
4. Gilden, with default leader. I'm trying out all the different races to see which fits best. My best game on the previous version was as Umber (hint, hint).
5. No success as yet. I'm wearing Kraxis down by targeting their cities while they battle me, Altaria and Tarth, but Karavox is landing plenty of solid hits on me. There's also a cheese-war taking place - the AI has access to various movement cheats (early access to Tireless March and early escape from Tremor immobilization) which I'm countering with save scumming when he does something that should
Well, I've given up on 0.913 for now: it's just a bit too tedious, even on 'Normal' difficulty. My complaints have all be cited above (slow leveling, monsters wandering a significant distance to attack my outpost and cities, etc.). I play for enjoyment, and this version isn't terribly fun (IMHO).
I'll repeat what I've said in another thread elsewhere in the FE forum a while ago, and what someone has already said in this thread: be careful not to mistake beta testers for end users. I see a bit of an arms race going on here: the beta testers find 'exploits' (e.g., specific trait/tech/strategy combinations that are highly effective), and the developers try to make them harder to achieve or less useful. To a certain extent, that's necessary -- you don't want a 'Monty Haul' campaign as the default -- but I've found the last few beta releases to be less fun and more tedious...and I go all the way back to EWOM, so I'm hardly a novice to this particular game.
I'll note that something similar happened with Fall From Heaven II. There was a version released in which the wandering barbarians stopped attacking your cities and instead would just wander through your territory destroying improvements. It was much more difficult and costly to kill them out 'in the field' than when defending your city, which meant you suddenly had to spend a lot more time building up your armies, replacing killed units, rebuilding destroyed improvements, etc., and the game got very tedious as a result. (I was playing the game to build empires, not to skirmish unendingly over farms, roads, and horses.) I rolled back to the previous release and never upgraded after that. This version has something of that flavor, and the game is losing its appeal to me as a result. YMMV. ..bruce..
Just aborted a game where basically started in such a position that there was no room to grow. Not sure what I am doing wrong, AI Tarth and Altar each jumpted out to three and four settlements respectively and I was more or less boxed in. There were no areas on the map, even with the toggle to show fertile areas to build cities. Needless to say, start locations need to be seriously addressed with random maps, the seeding is horrid. Yet again there was an Umberdorth lair nearby, not sure how, but one of the AIs either killed it our set it off on a rampage.
Pioneer/Outpost/City spam are seriously taking away from the game. Don't even think I played this for twenty minutes until I realized it was lost cause, you cannot come back from exponential growth, except for AI being, well the AI. As rule I don't wage war on Kingdoms playing as a Kingdom, call it personal, or role playing preference.
Game is still light years ahead of E WoM. Of course if you are trying to get casual gamers then the game is going to need some work. Folks are not going to want to play a game that as bfwebster indicated is tedious.
True, especialy because the AI is so bad at it.
Taking resources it doesn't need, even in the middle of peoples bases and building cities in terrible spots.
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