So after playing a couple of games I think Fallen Enchantress turned out pretty well, can't wait what it will play like on release.
What I noticed though is that there will always be one AI faction that gets mega strong while all the other AIs tend to fall behind hardcore and end up just as a sort of puffer between you and the super AI. Today I got lucky and had a game where a ) my main hero got a lot of nice stuff early on and b ) there were a lot of settlement tiles nearby so I was able to expand fast since I didn't need to worry too much about military.
I soon stumbled upon the neighbouring AI which turned on me after a couple of turns. With my hero being lvl 4 and having a good combination of items and skills I took settlements without too much trouble. I ended up conquering the whole peninsula on which I started, waiting for the message to pop up that I defeated the AI but wait, there's more. The AI ended up having about 10 settlements and a level 10 main hero (while mine was level 5 after fighting and question a lot). I finally defeated my neighbour but I was a little upset how the AI works in this game to be honest.
I'm not sure this is part of the pacing issues I read about on the forums but there's just no way to play on the same level as the AI in terms of expansion. You spend so much time training and scouting early that you don't even have enough time to get anywhere as much settlements going as the AI. With the settlement titles popping up randomly it's down to luck if you're gonna make it or not, while the AI just knows where to go without building explorers and wasting turns scouting. Adding to that, the majority of tile types reduce your movement and it takes forever to get anywhere, even when riding. In the end, the AI had a belt of settlements that spanned over half of the map.
I know it's common to give the AI an advantage in strategy games (I was playing on the 2nd lowest difficulty setting though) but I feel like in Fallen Enchantress the factions just "snowball" way too quickly with so many early settlements. If you're unlucky and don't start next to the one AI that's supposed to be the super AI then you're in for a bad awakening after a couple hundred turns.
1.) I never said I was against the idea of custom factions. I just said it was overpowered and at this point in time it is too easy to win with a custom faction. It is open to numerous combo-abuses and needs to be nerfed to balance the game. I suggested the idea of multiple picks for certain traits but the devs seem to disagree or haven't got round to implementing it yet.
The only reason I "gimp" myself by going with a regular faction is because the game is broken as it is with custom factions.
2.) I have MoM on my computer right now. I am not mis-informed. You get less picks as a custom archmage than a pre-made one. If you don't believe me then download dosbox, get a copy of MoM and see for yourself.
I'm not so sure about that... If you have the right city I think you could turtle pretty well... my current game 95% of my resource/production comes from 2 cities (out of 8 or 9) with those 2 cities and a research facility right now I could trump every other AI empire on the map.
Two questions you should ask yourself.
1. Would these cities be as powerful as they are if they did not have a few towns supporting them via the grocer line of buildings?
2. Would the AIs have left you unmolested if your Empire appeared as weak as it would have without the other 6-7 cities?
Of course, you are still right. One does not need to expand his Empire in order to win. I have won on Insane, with a standard race/sovereign (Irane), in revision 0.98b, without settling a single city. You do not need anything but a hero with Life magic to beat the game.
Was thinking about this complete off-topic thing, so decided to open up MoM, seemingly I can re-create all the archmages at my disposal, my attempts where with around 50% of the archmages, but I screenshotted the attempt at Sss'ra so you could see, mostly because this could very well be changed in a patch.
http://imageshack.us/a/img832/6396/momsrrra.jpg
http://imageshack.us/a/img841/5200/momcustomsrrra.jpg
Sincerely~ Kongdej
It is not a question about when you can trump the AI... because the AI still needs work, it is a question about whether you were better off using massive resources expanding or not, and I have seen no cases where I got burned by expanded, on the contrary that new city got the ability to churn out new units and pioneers at will, so I just "expanded" my build queue to triple the amount, ofcourse only the really dedicated cities produce big research and gold, but then again, you can dedicate all your cities to this, some better than others, but all of them will produce atleast 3-6 research and 2-4 gold per turn.
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