Welcome to the
Community Wishlist
(originally intended for Fixes, Critical Gameplay issues and original ideas concerning gameplay)
- Please post any interesting points you want to add -
An example for the layout of this post is as follows:
Number. Theme of points below:
- Description of the point. Possibly opinion of original poster. (original poster, confirming/strengthening poster) - Number of times this point has been confirmed/strengthened [comment by me - possibly a cry for YOUR help to confirm the issue]
- Mute point, either fixed or otherwise pointless. Still here to be remembered. Only found under category 17. Old points (original poster) [comment by me]
Feel free to search through this post for the themes included in this \tableofcontents:
0. Bugs | 1. (Possible) Exploits | 2. Military / Combat System | 3. Unit Abilities (granted from weapons or races) | 4. Faction Abilities | 5. Heroes Abilities/ Skill Paths / general | 6. Heroes' Spells | 7. (Heroes') Items | 8. Outposts | 9. Economy/Cities | 10. Quests / Random Events / Experience | 11. AI | 12. Map Issues | 13. Victory Conditions | 14. UI | 15. Crashes/Graphical Errors | 16. General Game Development | 17. Old points (uncategorized)
0. Bugs:
- I see the hero you get at 800 fame is still level 1. I thought that had been fixed, but I guess not. Seems like it shouldn't reset to 1. (Publius of NV) [unconfirmed. GandalfTheRedskin reported otherwise]
1. (Possible) Exploits:
- Pioneer exploit: queue up a bunch of pioneers to cheat the growth system (Brainjuggler, Mistwraithe)
- Pioners and any other units who cost resources should consume resource on completion and skip turns if resource not available, not consuming at moment of queue, this will fix all possible issues with grown, interest and everything else. (sharpxe)
- City militia units will only fight once: attack with one sacrificial unit, then attack with a second stack and all the city defenders won't be there (Brainjuggler)
2. Military / Combat System:
- City Militia would like ALOT of love. They require armour. (See parrotmath's armor mod to get you started). YOUR city militia also disappear after the first combat in a turn BUT AI city militia is full health every combat within a turn. Major imbalance and unfairness. Both AI and player should be under SAME rules. City militia should have health and death tracked throughout the turn so that multiple attacks can be defended by the same city militia AND those city milita retain damage dealt and deaths throughout the turn. (GFireflyE, Brainjuggler, abob101)
- Maybe give the militia the "defensive" trait and a shield (at least a wooden shield, or maybe the best shield currently available). That would make them more useful without making them too powerful. (Azunai_)
- Magical mercenaries should be changed to include mana upkeep. More types of mercenaries would be fun (even if it's DRM) (GFireflyE)
- Tactical camera, automatic focus on units should be disablable. (sharpxe)
- Swarm Mechanic TOO powerful. Please REMOVE the +1 atk from the bonus. Flanking units should NOT be granting additional attack. Addition accuracy is very keen and balanced. The +1 atk makes attrition too powerful a strategy. (GFireflyE)
- The cooldown of player and monster abilities should be reduced to 3 turns to make the combat more interesting. (Wizard1200)
- Caster heroes, even those with "melee" weapons equipped like the starting caster staff should be treated as ranged units for troop placement at the start of a battle. Caster heroes are still starting in the front lines with the melee troops if they have a staff/dagger. (Kantok)
- It's too easy to do absurd stuff in combat. Summon Skeletal Horde+Cull the Weak and Gallowman's consume spirit can generate far too much mana, Life Draining abilities and free heals makes the fastest way to recover health, to find a random weak AI city or wandering monster as a full heal. I propose that abilities that produce mana in combat should be capped at the amount of mana you started the battle with. Same for health production abilities. (Arcayer, sxyz123)
- Combats using Auto-Completion are handy, excepting that the AI often manages to deal out disproportionate damage to the Player's units making this method lackluster. (BernieTime)
- Conquering an enemy faction. When forcing the Enemy AI to surrender it's counter productive to raze the former leader's cities. If nothing else, the surrendering AI cities should become independent, not just disappear like Atlantis =P If that faction is/was my Ally, there should be a method of making the former Sovereign into a Vassal at some point. Maybe if my Ally's population or cities are below a certain threshold. (BernieTime)
- Magical staves always do the same damage even vs. magic immune targets. (Chaosti) [Please tell me how they work against Frost/Fire resistance]
- rename the "pass" button in tactical combat to "defend", and maybe add a tooltip that shows how much defense you gain from defending instead of attacking. (Azunai_)
3. Unit Abilities (granted from weapons or races):
- Bows and staves have no special abilities. Bows could have the "rain of arrows" or any other interesting ability and staves could have the "focus" ability that works like the spell with an additional action immediately afterwards. (Wizard1200, GFireflyE)
- I would offer that 'rain of arrows' be limited in range (assuming that you mean for the ability to do splash damage to a 2x2 tile area) so that bowmen cannot abuse it from afar. (GFireflyE)
- Staves would be cooler with some kind of ability like 'surge' or 'Spell Focus' that increases the potency of your next spell by 25%. (ie, casting Blind with surge would generate a 31% blindness instead of the regular 25%) (GFireflyE) [or maybe increase the buff duration?]
- Quendar race ability: flame tongue - really overpowered to the point of being ridiculous. Maybe a rebalance? It does 2x the damage of the unit's level in melee range in fire damage, and costs no mana to use. Early-game: Level 2 3-man Quendar: 2*3*2 = 12 damage spell; Midgame: Level 6 4-man Quendar: 6*4*2 = 48 damage spell; Endgame: Level 9 4-man Quendar: 9*4*2 = 72 damage spell; Level 9 5-man Quendar: 9*5*2 = 90 damage spell... Suggestion: severe damage reduction on this ability! (Chaosti)
4. Faction Abilities:
- Lucky is too strong and could instead better work like backswing. (Wizard1200)
- The Faction points that uncover research would be cooler if they would add some other unique bonus (e.g. Civilized would unlock "Civics" and provide a +5% gildar bonus) (me)
- Racial perks are balanced in favor of the Fallen Empires. Especially Tarth gives the Kingdoms a disadvantage compared to Urxens. (ArisianOne)
5. Heroes Abilities/ Skill Paths / general:
- Warrior trait tree: Probably switch the special abilities that currently hide behind Weapon specific (e.g. +Axe Damage/+Spear Damage) traits to the front of those lines. That would in my humble opinion make the warrior so much more onjoyable to level instead of being stuck with boring +dmg that does not even benefit your current weapon. (me)
- the path trees are too long and the abilities have too many prerequisites. For example instead of evoker I - IV there should be only aeromancy, geomancy, ... that increases the damage of air, earth, ... spells by 50 % or instead of vital strike I - III there should be only vital strike that increases the critical hit chance by 15 and the critical damage by 50 %. (Wizard1200, Lord Micheal) [this has been partly changed during recent versions - Evoker IV was removed]
- Totally agree here. After playing a few games in beta, I think when a champion levels up, they should be able to choose one trait
in each tree. I find myself choosing only spells in the beginning. By the time I start choosing combat skills the game is nearly over. (Lord Micheal, Bernietime)
- Hero Trait advancement is painfully slow. Recommend giving "free" extra traits every "x" levels and a Free Trait pick upon choosing the Hero's path. Free trait picks could be restricted to the Generic side only used to help balance out some current path deficiencies. Like having an Armor advancement path restricted by Level. (Bernietime) [e.g. something along the lines of a 2 traits points every 5 levels]
- Why not give a customisable hero/hench once the game has gone through all the pre-programmed heroes? So you could choose the skills, Path and items (within certain constraints) for an x level hero/hench. As a reward for getting to a high level of fame (you attract the heroes you want ). (StevenAus) [fyi the last hero currently unlocks at 4800 Fame]
- As soon as a medium or high level commander is in an army the unit stats are unbalanced. The commander could instead of passives use active abilites e.g. to improve the accuracy by 25 for 1 turn, the spell resistance by 25 for 1 turn, ... (Wizard1200)
- If commanders are too strong, then their abilities should be weakened, but making them be like other heroes just so that they line up better is wrong. The entire point of a commander is to fill the role of a vanilla hero who doesn't have to go about doing stuff to function. We already have an active buffer, he's the defender. (Arcayer)
- The Commander Champions should be able to gain XP 's while assisting cities too. (Lord Micheal)
- How about for Commander exp there is exp bonus for building world achievements where they are stationed? Maybe even other 1 per faction buildings but not as much awarded? (kendainty)
- Beastmasters can tame extremely powerful beasts, en-masse early in, which then have no upkeep. Tame beast's cost should scale to the level of the enemy monster, making it easier to tame wandering wolves in the beginning, and harder to start out with an armada of cave bears. (Arcayer)
6. Heroes' Spells:
- The scaling of some spells destroys the balance. For example flame dart is useless at low levels and overpowered at high levels. (Wizard1200)
- The power of some spells is too low (shadowbolt, cloak of thorns, ...) and should be increased like the healing spells in 0.87 (Wizard1200) [Shadowbolt was nerfed due to the Spell not being resistable]
- The AI does not use strategic spells (pillar of flame, freeze, ...) against the player and strategic spells inflict too much damage IF a high level mage casts them. (Wizard1200) [The AI does use some spells now. Although that number and variety could still be improved upon imho]
7. (Heroes') Items:
- Staves should use spell mastery for the attack and spell resistance for the defense. (Wizard1200, GFireflyE)
- All 'magical' staves should be ranged weapons that deal magical damage equal to their specific shard type (blunt weapons staves that have no magical properties can remain melee, though I doubt any hero would use them). This would place mages on the backline WHERE THEY BELONG. Mage path should have the ability to increase the damage of their staff weapon embeded within. Something like "Attunement - increase staff attack by 25% if you share magic type as the staff) (GFireflyE) [This also concerns the Summoners Staff with the +10 atk vs. elementals, it is pretty useless atm]
- Complex does not equal interesting. Vanilla pieces are as important as their more complicated counterparts. (Arcayer) [agreed, but it shouldn't mean that there should be no Staves/Bows with special abilities]
- The damage of crossbows is too low. (Wizard1200) [and they are still not to different from bows. boring.]
- Few Late game Mage/Archer items and much less Mage items compared to melee. (Stupidity10)
8. Outposts:
- Outposts may be better off if a different unit would be used for construction. At the moment, it costs WAY too much for pioneers to be used to construct outposts. The SCOUT unit should have the option to be consumed and build an outpost. Imo, upgrading outposts should involve scouts being consumed on the site to select an upgrade INSTEAD of the current option of building upgrades directly from your city. Outposts should also have the CHOICE of which city they are to be associated with and thereby where the bonuses they are collecting are going to. Resources should be tied to the closest outpost/city. (Not just the closest city). (GFireflyE, Brainjuggler)
9. Economy/Cities:
- The tax system could better have different internals: Free Spirited at 10% tax with 16% unrest, Low at 20% tax with 19% unrest, Normal at 30% tax with 24% unrest. High at 50% tax wtih 40% unrest, Brutal at 70% tax with 64% unrest, and finally Oppressive at 90% tax with 96% unrest. Some other economy and unrest rebalancing may have to be done as well, but this opens up taxing your population with MUCH more meaningful levels of tax. (GFireflyE) [some work has been done here. I would like more opinions on this matter. How does the new tax system fare?]
- unique buildings: adding a unique building to the queue prevents anyone else from building it (even if its not built yet) (Brainjuggler)
- All factions should be able to attempt building the Unique Wonders. The Faction that finishes first should get full benefits, but that shouldn't negate other nations from completing a "knockoff" of the wonder. You'd still get a building and not wasting all that queue time, it just wouldn't be anywhere near as impressive as the "Original Wonder". (BernieTime)
- City Razing is imbalanced. Should imo NOT be instant razing. A raze could better take duration equal to city level. (GFireflyE, sharpxe, abob101)
- City Razing is one of the biggest flubs that FE/LH has in place. The best method IMO that has been suggested is that a city which has been successfully attacked suffers a major population loss. If population goes below Zero, THEN the city is reduced to rubble. Oh, and quit salting the square where the city used to be. That's just stupid. Ireland is full of Castles being build on top of other Castles. (BernieTime)
- While it's currently not the actual case in the game, you shouldn't be receiving a global unrest penalty for having a recently conquered city to your empire. That unrest should be localized to the conquered city in question. As the local unrest of the conquered city decreases over time, the global unrest should increase. (GFireflyE)
- Cities should level up at different intervals: Level2 @ 100 pop. Level3 @ 200 pop. Level4 @ 400pop. Level5 @ 600pop. Right now, you're capital levels WAY too fast, often before your second city location is even discovered and the player has to make an UNINFORMED decision as to what your capital now has to specialize into. (GFireflyE)
- Road pathbuilding wants to have attention. Many threads about this one. (GFireflyE)
10. Quests / Random Events / Experience:
- More quests should give options to choose between different artifacts. (Stupidity10)
- Combats with AI should generate similarly weighted experiance as combats with monsters. Currently there is almost ZERO point to attacking AI to generate experiance. In addition, random events should be gone through to ensure that proper amounts of fame and experiance are handed out upon there completion. (I've seen too many that were overlooked). (GFireflyE) [apparently trash units give trash exp and late game units give more exp.]
11. AI:
- While the AI has improved dramatically to date, there is still a huge lack when it comes to their strategic military decisions. When to declare war. When to demand tribute. When to attack weaker stacks. When to attack stronger ones. Why don't they do stuff like summon units when in combat? Or cast strategic spells just prior to an attack? Or clear there own territory of quest huts and lair huts? Or buy 50 copies of the same leather bracers (saw that again in a 0.80 let's play)? Or always do the same strategy to victory (resoln is ALWAYS building towers)? Imo, there should be a different level of interaction between AI 'out there' and AI touching your faction's borders. (GFireflyE)
- Diplomacy is still an aspect of the game that is lacking. There are not enough options to interact with the AI. Different types of treaties. Different types of pacts and alliances. AI should have different levels of tolerance in dealing with you depending on who you are, who they are, special considerations, and faction power. Lot's of work to be done here imo. (GFireflyE, abob101)
- The AI uses powerful tactical spells (blizzard, fireball, ...) only rarely. (Wizard1200)
- AI is terrible at building infrastructure. Villages, Conclaves and Towns all build troops even when fortresses are available. Ive seen newly founded villages produce troops then build buildings that increase food or gildar by %. (Stupidity10)
- I would really love for AI to value resources EVEN if they have some of those. It makes no sense to attempt a trade with an AI player who got 20 metal, and I'm offering him 50 and the perceived value is 0. Really? Same with crystals, horses and wargs. As it is now you can't do anything with your surplus of a resource except money - Gildar, and research knowledge. It makes no sense at all. If I'm stranded in a location and only resource available to me are horses or metal, I should be able to trade it for crystals or wargs. Yes if the AI has some too, maybe even more than he needs, he will give me a low price for it, but really 100 crystals value 0 to you when you have only 15? (Anelyn)
- My biggest AI pet peeves are about the fact that it still does things players just wouldn't do, ever. 1) It sends out lone heroes into enemy territory. It just shouldn't do that. Only in peaceful times when you're levelling your hero he might be on his own. Otherwise always accompanied by troops. 2) It makes too many 'unit only stacks' and hardly no stacks of doom. Players only make a few stacks and try to make them as strong as possible. The AI should really invest more time in that and not scatter its units so much. (LordTheRon)
12. Map Issues:
- Unrest should be made to scale with the Map size. Currently on Huge Maps Unrest is really unmanageable. The way the game works now I've never been able to scale the economy above LOW due to lack of ways to counter Unrest as an Empire grows. (BernieTime)
13. Victory Conditions:
- Also at victory conditions, change Diplomatic Victory to: Create and hold an Alliance with all players left in game for 30 seasons (or something like this). Is really too easy to get this victory as it is now, pretty much if you have a slight start / faction power compared to rest of AI's, is the quickest way to win the game without even breaking past mid game tech / research wise. (Anelyn)
14. UI:
- Please add a scaling to the skillbars in tactical combat to support the usage of the whole widescreen monitor some technologically advanced people here use. Kidding. At this moment in time everyones skillsbar is as long as 1/10th of the whole screen even on a 640*480 resolution... That really is a waste. Just take a look at Dragon Age:Origins - their skillbar was customizable in length. The first 10 skills had shortcuts (the numbers 1-0) and after that the other skills were just clickable. Imho a good way to handle that. (me, cammagno74)
- Clarify the way traits stack. at the moment, it's not obvious whether traits stack or replace each other (they all stack, btw.). that's a fairly common question in the forum (a new version of that thread pops up about once per week). I suggest changing the descriptions/tooltips of the traits to better describe the mechanic, for example: "Lethal III - increases Attack by +5, cumulative with Lethal I and Lethal II for a combined effect of +12". Alternately, change the descriptions/tooltips to indicate the combined value and change the description accordingly, i.E. "Lethal III - increases attack by +12, replaces Lethal I and II". I think the second version is easier to understand, though the first one is probably easier to implement (just have to change the tooltip/description texts, without changing program logic which icons to display on the character sheet) (Azunai_)
- the swapping of queue items is too unintuitive: add 2 buttons that appear when you select an item in the queue : 1st button = move the item 1 position up in the queue, 2nd button = move 1 position down in the queue. OR Make the "queue list" be completly scrollable with the mouse, so that, when you have selected one item with the mouse, if you move the mouse on the left part of the page, the game understand that you want to move this item on the previous page, and scroll to this page automaticaly. (stardock334)
- Upgrade paths for items are still messed up. I think the simpliest solution would be: offer 2 upgrade 'paths'. one for the 'warfare' path and one for the 'magic' path items. That way, for example, if I want warhammers on my units rather than lightning hammers, I can. Same thing with regards to armor and such. (Chaosti) [this has changed during the last few version. Please provide a bit more feedback for it.]
- When upgrading units: if doing an armour upgrade, the game should not try to replace soldier's boots (+1 initiative) with armor-type boots (e.g. leather)! Similarly, it really shouldn't try to upgrade leather armor into the monk's armor (sure it gives 1 extra defense and 5 dodge, but generally that's not a worthwhile upgrade for the crystal and gold cost!) (Chaosti)
15. Crashes/Graphical Errors:
- Restarting a game too often will cause the graphic engine to break and deliver graphics too bright to be pleasing. (me)
- After playing for too long the game will start flickering and eventually black will cover most of the screen. The game itself still works if you know where to click. But you can no longer see any menues, etc. (me)
- The game will sometimes not close its process after a long playsession causing possibly 1GB of Memory and a great deal of Processor power to be blocked (probably due to a memory leak). (me)
16. General Game Development:
- Be inspired by Mods produced from the Community. I really couldn't stand playing without the Bridge Mod (for instance). (BernieTime)
- Also, I totally agree that playstyle is very important; that's why I'm suggesting buffing the less interesting factions, rather than nerfing the powerful ones (I don't want to see balance come at the expense of diversity). Really, the whole point is that I'd love to see even more playstyles be viable without feeling like I'm unduly handicapping myself. (ArisianOne)
17. Old points (uncategorized):
- And finally archery bug. If my Assassin uses bows, and I researched end of the line longbows (including magical ones) who supposedly ignore 50% of target defense, that coupled with my 75% target defense ignore from Assassin path, should give me 100% Defense ignore on enemies. Yet the damage displayed on tooltip and actual damage dealt in combat reflects that neither are applied at all. With a Sovereign with 24 attack, with a bow that deals fire damage and amulets that add fire and ice damage (2 each), with 75% + 50% Defense ignore, with Break used, should do more than 1-5 damage on a Statue Lord (or what he's called, the ones leading the golem bands in scrapyard). (Anelyn) [Probably fixed during the fixing of curse. That fix also made "Ereogs Token" a very good item. Try it!]
- Break skill does not work. It graphically applies the debuff on targeted enemy, it is shown when inspecting said enemy in tactical screen, but it's effect is not applied, target retains full defense (against all attackers, including the Assassin who used Break). (Anelyn) [Supposedly fixed as of 0.9 - someone confirm this please]
- Heroes that have no more traits to spend skill points on get stuck in the levelup screen once they level up again. (me) [fixed as of 0.87]
- Knights of Asok, Mercenary and Border Camps are still useless due to the high upkeep cost of their units and the inability to upgrade them. This will ruin one to many games a new player will start (this was pointed out by Lord Xia in the 0.87 and 0.9 Changelog post) [balanced during 0.91]
- Stacks can't move after fighting: let an enemy clear a nest of baddies, then claim the treasure yourself. With some clever use of sacrificial units and choke points, you can keep enemy stacks at bay indefinitely. (Brainjuggler) [Changed during 0.91 or 0.92]
- unique buildings must be reworked in favor of MP balance - first player who build recieve fullpower structure, all other players still able to build it, but recieve only minor bonus. (sharpxe) [Stardock said that the game will not be balanced towards MP if there will ever be one.]
- BTW: The hard cap of 9 on resources per square of land (ie grain + materials + essence <= 9) is my personal bugbear, I detest this change. Not sure if others agree but merely knowing that I have no chance of finding a really awesome settle spot removes a significant part of my fun from exploring and expanding. I haven't tried the latest couple of versions tho so it is possible they have already removed the hard cap. (Mistwraithe) [the cap is moddable through the xml]
- Also another execution glitch with Rain of Arrows from Assassin path, sometimes (often) instead of firing instantly the caster remains stuck for 10-15 seconds with no casting animation then the damage happens instantly. (Anelyn) [this has been fixed as of 0.91]
Contributors (in order of appearance): Brainjuggler, sharpxe, GFireflyE, Wizard1200, abob101, Lord Micheal, Anelyn, Kantok, Stupidity10, Arcayer, kendainty, Mistwraithe, Azunai_, stardock334, Chaosti, BernieTime, LordTheRon, Publius of NV, StevenAus, ArisianOne, ... and many more to come.
Please do add to the discussion by linking sources in this forum (if possible and applicable).
I will continue to add everything to this list that any of you points out. And if things double or triple I will add +1,+2,+3,etc. behind those points.
And I will also continue to update the points on this list. Possibly removing anything that has changed or has been fixed.
Also if you could suggest better categories or a change of categories in my list. Please, feel free to do so.
I believe I saw in another thread that it is now moddable.
I would really love for AI to value resources EVEN if they have some of those. It makes no sense to attempt a trade with an AI player who got 20 metal, and I'm offering him 50 and the perceived value is 0. Really? Same with crystals, horses and wargs.
As it is now you can't do anything with your surplus of a resource except money - Gildar, and research knowledge. It makes no sense at all. If I'm stranded in a location and only resource available to me are horses or metal, I should be able to trade it for crystals or wargs. Yes if the AI has some too, maybe even more than he needs, he will give me a low price for it, but really 100 crystals value 0 to you when you have only 15?
Also at victory conditions, change Diplomatic Victory to: Create and hold an Alliance with all players left in game for 30 seasons (or something like this). Is really too easy to get this victory as it is now, pretty much if you have a slight start / faction power compared to rest of AI's, is the quickest way to win the game without even breaking past mid game tech / research wise.
Added your neat suggestions into the OP. I believe that the whole Diplomacy is really what makes this game a lot less than it could be.
We also broke the 1000 Views! Yeah!
I am stoked to see if this thread can be of any help for the devs.
Just a user note on this thread, despite I did (hopefully) contribute to bring some aspects / bugs to attention, I do not agree on all points risen in this thread.
For example:
1) Cap on resources is fine, balances most spots, and having a bad start (3/4/0 for example) vs an opponent with a theoretic awesome spot (6/5/5) would be disastrous, especially if said lucky one is your warmongering neighbor with advantages from difficulty level as well.
2) Combat with AI depends - Xp wise - not on number of his troops, but their level and type. Beating on hordes of militia and pikemen will net very little Xp. Fighting higher level advanced units will give you good xp. Same with enemy Heroes. If you kill his lvl 4 champ with your lvl 10+ army, well... you figure
3) Regarding the whole mage staves and stuff. Mages main power is in spells, mana and shards. Staves damage is completely irrelevant, and they have nice bonuses to spell mastery, spell dmg, resists etc. No, spell resist and spell mastery have nothing to do with accuracy, enemy dodge and your dodge.
4) The spells are perfectly fine as they are. If someone is doing too much damage with a given spell, it means they have a large amount of shards of the specific type which influence said spell (can't compare a blizzard with 1 water shard, non upgraded vs one with 8 fully upgraded). Which means is your fault for allowing them to control that many resources
5) The whole Hero skills / ability: they are fine. They are made this way to force players to make decisions. You are not supposed to max all trees and get all goodies. You have options instead of having everything - good design decision. I want to deal damage with my spells, fine I will specialize in one school of magic which gives me the spell(s) I like most for doing damage, and pick up the perks that give me more spell damage. I want to be powerful summoner, then I pick the summons line and fill it up full. I want to not have my curses resisted, I will go and pick all spell mastery traits. Don't treat spells as individual entities. Most of them are tied directly into how many shards of their type you posses. Healing spells, debuffs, buffs, damage spells, summons, all are affected by shards of a given type. That's how you make them more potent, not by picking all talents from spellcasting. Same for melee / assassin traits, decide what role you want said champion to fulfill and follow that path.
5a) Regarding beastmaster emmm, creatures only increase in HP / accuracy and spell resist as they level. Their atk / defense remain same. You can't equip them with enchanted gear / trinkets. So yeah you will have a level 20 bear with 20 atk / 0 defense / 100 hp which dies in 1 hit from pretty much anything around that level. Yes some beasts have good stats, but they still don't replace the advanced troops or summons (my level 20 Air elemental with 12 air power bonus (shrines and buildings) would like an word with any of the beasts you can tame & level, he'll probably 2 shot it before said beast can even take an action). Sure is nice taming them early on - much harder later in game when they are leveled and have higher resists, but they are not game breaking. Same as dark shrine spawned elemental for Ceresa can rape in early game once you get it to a stack of 5 when your troops are limited to groups of 3, but soon as you get into mid game they will get 1 shot by any mob who means business.
6) Regarding moving after fighting. No. Don't go alone? How costly / hard is to bring a scout to follow your army and block the spot if enemy players are nearby? Oh if you're at war with said enemy then don't kill it when he's next to it? Or bring a low level hero to pick up stuff It's a strategic choice you make when you know you can't move after attacking, it prevents attacking and retreating for example if I'm set on venturing into Scrapyard or the Swamp (epic quests), where if an abundance of close enemies patrolling the area, would be too easy to pick a group at a time then move back preventing any attacks during their turn. No, but thanks no
7) Cooldown of 5 turns on abilities gives them a purpose. When do I use this ability to get best use of it? Will I have it again available in time for this fight? The pace of combat is fast enough as it is (pretty much there is 1 turn unless you use aoe daze from a spell / item until both sides make contact and initiate combat). The power of abilities is based on this cooldown. Can you kill 3-5 darkling shamans in 3 turns after you eat waves of aoe spikes? If you don't have a powerful AoE spell and they don't fail to interrupt it, and you don't have enough ranged units with good enough power to 1 shot them each, what will you do? Wait until you are level 30 with all troops so you can survive the damage? You can't reach them in melee as you will get swarmed by their wolf riders and packs of melee as you try to advance.
8) Swarm mechanic is fine as it is. It promotes usage of tanky units to attract and tank the swarm while you do damage. Like Defender with 3 rounds of immunity to physical dmg, potion of invulnerability etc. The swarmers usually have low attack ratings and don't present a threat individually, it's a good mechanic. It's also one of the few things that enables you to hit and damage high defense / high dodge targets. Really good mechanic.
9) NO to pikes doubling swarm bonuses. We need more diversity in game, not 1 type of weapon best of all.
That's bout' it IMHO
I stated that beastmasters are too strong, not because they can access high level beasts per-se, but high power beasts. Namely, my strategy for winning with a beastmaster, is to find some cave bears or the like, tame them, use those to gather some skaths or somesuch, and then you can grab corpse spiders, great wolfs, giant rock spiders and ravenous harridans. These fights should happen at about a pace where you sacrifice one army to get the next. If a resist check fails at a bad time, it falls apart, but if you keep the rate of failure at about 20% you only really need to risk yourself some four evolutions. IE- 40% success rate. Note that failing doesn't really destroy your kingdom, it just means you'll have to win somewhat fairly from there.
Once you've got a powerful army of beasts, you turn against high level quests and wild lands. With those under your control, you should get enough of a lead to become unbeatable.
Late game, beastmastery isn't ungodly. It's also reasonable that it gives early game advantage, it's an early game class. The problem is, the advantage given by beastmastery makes bandit lord look laughable in comparison. It's so fast, that you should be able to effectively win before the enemy gets his fourth research. The mid-game and late game doesn't even happen.
Thus, I hold that beastmasters should have to pay more mana for higher level beasts. This would tie beastmastery closer to your economy, and wouldn't affect it much in the late game, while reducing its momentum in the early game.
Ah thanks for clearing it up. Yes in a duel situation tiny map this will be as you described, some factions are tailored to bloom mid-end game (like most summoner / heavy casting ones, when getting more shards and more spells increases your potency). But this is a limited sort of scenario, plus depending on map (like random generated ones) there may not be enough beasts or the ones you're counting on.
However your solution is plausible and logical. But keep in mind that come mid-late game there are spells (for water mage for example) that halves the mana cost of tactical spells (mana tide if am not mistaken), there are also items that reduce cost of tactical spells (staves for example), and there's plenty of mana generation buildings (including upgrading shard buildings) so mana is never a problem at that stage unless you want to spam 25 xp on a hero at high levels or spam volcano.
I think the way they balanced it without a higher mana cost is by having tougher beasts (and higher levels of them) being much more resistant to taming (inherent spell resist stat if am not mistaken).
On a final note am not sure how you could clear wildlands and do epic quests with a pack of beasts, I will give it a try but I doubt I'll have good results (they lack defenses and you can't put spell resist or magic school resist which is vital in such battles). Heck even scrapyard would be almost impossible (since you mention you do this in early game) so you will at best have 5 beasts with you (and they don't benefit from group sizes) nor will you have access to tech to increase their levels (maybe get lucky with night of the beast or w/e is called which buffs level of monsters in player control). If you can record such a feat I'd be looking forward to see it (at least on normal play difficulty).
i disagree with the militia needing armor. that's not necessary IMO. just give them the "defensive" trait and a shield (at least a wooden shield, or maybe the best shield currently available). that would make them useful without making them too powerful.
My suggestion to add to the todo (before the release if possible) list (I've reported it in a separated thread and only get players agreeing with this)
I find this game absolutly great but there is one thing that often piss me off is the fact that, when, in a city, you have already a queue of 5 things to build, and you add a 6th one, and then you decide you want this 6th one to be 1st one (for exemple to rush it), you can't do that (or I haven't found how to do to that) because you can't drag the 6th thing from page 2 to page 1 of the queue.
The only way I've found is to cancel one of the 5 first things... then the 6th became the 5th, so appear on the page 1 of the queue, and can be moved to 1st position.
But it's really annoying to have to do that, especialy when you already have 2 or 3 pages of queue cause you have to repeat the operation for each page.
So, my suggestion :
- add 2 buttons that appear when you select an item in the queue : 1st button = move the item 1 position up in the queue, 2nd button = move 1 position down in the queue.
- make the "queue list" be completly scrolable with the mouse, so that, when you have selected one item with the mouse, if you move the mouse on the left part of the page, the game understand that you want to move this item on the previous page, and scroll to this page automaticaly.
Thanks in advance
Thank you Anelyn for your diverse opinion on some matters here. I wont include counter points in the OP mainly because that would just be copying any and all conversation here into one post which is pointless. Instead if anyone has an issue that "bugs" him it gets onto the list and then everybody can decide for himself (like you did) if it is a good issue. This does not unbalance the feedback in any way.
Also one can always read the whole thread for more counteropinions.
I must admit though: You make excellent points there.
Concerning 1) The devs already aid they wont balance the starting locations. I do not know why exactly, but there is always Ctrl+N isn't there?
3) Well the abilities for the staves was thought out for the normal mage units (which do not cast at all) so a neat little ability like a cage or web wouldn't speak gainst it. Yes heroes don't need abilities on staves, but units do.
You make a good point for 5) with the mage trait. I believe though, that the Mage tree should be split into Summoner and Warlorck completly. Meaning we would have one more profession. No other profession has their tree this way split into 2 completly different trees. Summoner could split into Support and Damage summons and passives and Warlock could easily be split into Evoker and Spellmastery lines (adding a decision between potentially more damage and less "safer" damage is a good move don't you agree?)
And also there is only one magical profession in a game that should be in a magic world. Does not sound reasonably to me at all. There should be more magic professions, one way or another.
Concerning your 5) when you decide between 2 sub classes you should be able to max those by the late game. which is at this moment not quite possible with the mage tree for example you get a few of the traits and then you have won already.
But that is just the heroes level system.
7) I agree with you here. The cooldown is fine. It adds this interesting decision. But again. Some people think otherwise. And they make a post here which means they take interest in it. So it is a part of the feedback.
9) yeah I think pikes are fine. They do have a special ability and another bonus with the no counter attack.
to stardock123: You are able to do this though! You must drag the 6th item over the "backwards arrow" or the 5th item over the "forward arrow" this way those two swap places.
Well I don't embrace the idea of restarting a game just because I got a non-ideal start. With the way the resources per tile are balanced / capped now, my opponents will get an early advantage but nothing overpowered. Unlike Civ 5, there is no such thing as having a spot that can cost you the game, it's a bit more challenging - yes, and encourages you to scout more quickly to find better spots, rather than sit in your corner
There are no unit-only weapons in the game. They should just give mage units some base ability (like slow or haste) and that's be about it
I don't think you can really split the casters like that. Any caster has access to all sort of spells in his specialization line (air water fire earth death life) so you can't prevent a summoner from making good use of a damaging spell, or prevent a warlock from summoning a decent minion that doesn't have 10 hp and flops when someone looks at it Damage is damage, if you mean safer damage by summons, ummm I don't agree, they don't act when you summon them which means there is a high chance they will vaporize before even get to act (including skeletal horde). Since there are no safe CC spells like a mesmerize, freeze, stasis w/e, blind being only a -25% penalty to accuracy which means almost nothing vs high level mobs / enemies, you can't say it's safer And spells are not guaranteed to hit, even if you have 1000 spell mastery, hit and resist are capped at 3% and 97%. Can't go higher, can't go lower. The advantage of DD spells is they always do damage even if resisted - dmg is halved, while curses are completely resisted - mana wasted.
I have no problem going full summon line in a normal game on main hero and picking additional couple skills. Maybe you pick too many abilities in the general tab? All they do is speed up your leveling, not really helping you level more, since the xp on map is fixed (except the rng with enemy AI, if you fight low level troops and heroes you get almost nothing).
if you split up the mage class, you also have to split up the commander (the difference between a "general" commander and a "governor" commander is even bigger then with the 2 mage "subclasses") and you could make a case of splitting up the defender, too (though the two subclasses are less distinguised and quite frankly i think the lower path [magic resist & summon sentinel] is pretty useless compared to the defense & HP tank spec). plus, splitting the mage tree also makes interesting hybrid specs impossible (i.e. speccs with debuffs & summons that need both, summoning and spell mastery traits)
You do not need shards to make blizzard powerful, because it has a good base damage (8) and this damage is multiplied by the number of units. If you have warlock and evoker III blizzard inflicts 14 points of damage per unit or 70 points of damage against a group of 5 units.
Cull the weak is currently way overpowered and should have either of the following (not both though):
1) cannot be cast on summoned units like summon spells and Raise skeletal horde. You can sacrifice lots of slaves if you wish this way for mana.
2) a cooldown timer. I think 3 turns would be recommended.
Overall though, I think #1 would be the better fix. Without the ability to convert summons into mana, you can only sacrifice troops, which takes time to train and move to your army to use as sacrifices.
#2 merely means you gotta stretch out a battle and wait longer to turn all 9 skeletons into mana.
Every have access to around 4000 mana by turn 150? Not very hard with cull the weak :/
Am sorry not sure I understand the problem. You want blizzard to do no damage without talents and / or shards to support it? You can't balance a spell from a single spectrum. It needs to be good to use when you get it with no talents and no or few shards, and just gets better and better as you pick talents and / or gather more shards (and build improvements that affect them) as the game advances.
A single water shard fully upgraded will double your blizzard damage. Now imagine you have 6 or more fully upgraded shards. Then add specific improvements.
It's like the added fire dmg from the city spell. Sure 4 fire damage (as Queen P. with scryer's pool) is great to add to my Long Bows. However the mechanic adds that to each individual unit inside the party / group / company etc. So that easily doubles or more the damage your normal archers would do. Then again this is perfectly fine, as it forces players to not embrace purely magic research or warfare. You have to combine them both to have good survival (or hopes of survival) in mid-late game encounters, you need a good mix of defense, dodge, spell resist, elemental resists in order to survive first round of the battle
Quendar race ability: flame tongue - really overpowered to the point of being ridiculous. Needs a fix.
It does 2x the damage of the unit's level in melee range in fire damage, and costs no mana to use
Early-game: Level 2 3-man Quendar: 2*3*2 = 12 damage spell
Midgame: Level 6 4-man Quendar: 6*4*2 = 48 damage spell
Endgame: Level 9 4-man Quendar: 9*4*2 = 72 damage spell
Level 9 5-man Quendar: 9*5*2 = 90 damage spell
Suggestion: severe damage reduction on this ability! Specifically, it should be 1x level of the unit, or even 0.5x. And it should cost mana too.
Effectively, every quendar unit has access to their own fire arrow spell, which costs no mana, and is multiplied by the size of the unit!.
But as you can tell from the basic damage listing above, the damage from Quendars is OP from start to finish.
When upgrading units:
if doing an armour upgrade, the game should not try to replace soldier's boots (+1 initiative) with armor-type boots (e.g. leather)!
Similarly, it really shouldn't try to upgrade leather armor into the monk's armor (sure it gives 1 extra defense and 5 dodge, but generally that's not a worthwhile upgrade for the crystal and gold cost!)
i think the perfect fix for that problem would be to link the shield slot to the weapon upgrade button. if i design a unit with soldier boots and bracers and a scaled cloak, i generally don't want the monk robe, leather boots and an ice warg cloak. upgrading the wooden shield to a round shield or later a kite shield is always worth it, though.
by moving the shield slot upgrade to the weapon upgrade button, you could upgrade both your shield and weapon without replacing leather/soldier items and also without auto replacing scaled cloaks with ice warg cloaks.
that's not how shard upgrades work. you don't get extra shard power by upgrading a node. one shard is one shard; altar > shrine > temple only increases the mana output.
Combat mechanic: Fire/ice staves is overpowered.
- it is not considered magic, yet does magic damage. Most importantly, They ignore armour.
- Furthermore, things that are magic immune can be attacked with these staves and killed.
End-game (turn 120-200) I was running around with armies consisting of: 1 hero (mage, summoning skeletons and other units), 6x5 warg riding ice stave users.
The basic plan had the mage summoning units to lure the enemy away, and then the stave users would do damage.
The worst part of this is that since it's considered magic damage, the AI's full plate mail equipped units (like 80+ armour) were taking full damage from my basic weaponry (I had the 6 damage version, not even the 12 damage one)!!!
Suggestion:
Rather than 6 elemental damage, it should probably be 1 elemental, and 5 physical.
Similarly, the 12 elemental damage version should probably be 2 elemental and 10 physical.
Just going to piggyback on Arcayer's point:
Its easy to use whisp's mana free heals and spells to heal up at the end of every fight, by purposely prolonging the fight at the end. This means, that no matter how many weaker armies the AI sends at me, it cannot wear my army down. This is bad for the AI, cause the primary advantage of the AI at higher difficulties is to send swarms of armies at the player, which have no hope of beating any of the players armies -- even in their combined numbers.
I may seem nitpicky here, but its really a game breaking design flaw for me, cause as soon as I realize the AI cannot beat me, its pretty much game over cause I only play to try to pull out victories against impossible or at least unlikely odds. Maybe its only an issue for me, idk...
I'm not sure what a good solution is... It's not simple, that's why I hesitated to bring it up...it requires some system to cap how much units can be healed in a season. Its a solution that newbs might hate, but those wanting the AI not be cakewalk may enjoy...again idk.
There's a lot to like (or not like) about the community's input here, but seeing as you're asking, here's a few notes of my own;
I think the simpliest solution would be:
- offer 2 upgrade 'paths'. 1 for the 'warfare' path and 1 for the 'magic' path items.
That way, for example, if I want warhammers on my units rather than lightning hammers, I can. Same thing with regards to armor and such.
I really like Chaosti's point here. That would let all my current problems with the upgrade system vanish.
Good point!
There really should just be an option to pick each item that gets upgraded, so you aren't forced to upgrade a whole suit of leather into chain/plate all at once. I mean the upgrade button just assumes the heaviest armor you have available is best and that you want all armor slots replaced. Not so, and if it is, it would mean armor is really dumbed down then (yes, everyone wears plate!!!)
I assume the upgrade screen was created as a first attempt to offering more choices. Hope I'm right.
My biggest AI pet peeves are about the fact that it still does things players just wouldn't do, ever.
1) It sends out lone heroes into enemy territory. It just shouldn't do that. Only in peaceful times when you're levelling your hero he might be on his own. Otherwise always accompanied by troops.
2) It makes too many 'unit only stacks' and hardly no stacks of doom. Players only make a few stacks and try to make them as strong as possible. The AI should really invest more time in that and not scatter its units so much.
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