We generally Nerf more than Buff because our default is to lean toward making things as overpowered as possible and then Nerf them down if they are to good.

In this case the later game weapons were buffed to reduce the midgame slog.  We want more advanced units to be more effective against earlier units and monsters.  We want the players to feel more progression, be more afraid when they see advanced units and be able to kill off enemy empires with less friction if they field armies with more advanced tech and resources.

Thanks for the reply. Makes total sense. ... ... in theory.

+1

I've made this change to my games with remarkable success (imo). Sure if you think about it, having only 150% attack means you are losing 1/2 a turn and it doesn't seem efficent. However, if that added bonus is enough to dispatch an enemy before they do stupid stuff...like heal....or DESPAIR....or attack....then it's worth the exchange.

In addition, I've said it before, but I'll mention it again: I've removed the +1 attack bonus from the Swarm ability and have been very impressed with those results aswell. Swarm in it's original form is way too overpowered. While the attack is removed, the increase chance to hit is still there....turning Swarm into a flanking bonus. More balanced imo.

When additional units are summoned, do they also provide XP when defeated when the battle is over?

Now, choosing beast lord has become even more OP!

why would you want to remove the xp from the battle?  You defeated the monster using a spell, you should get XP.   It doesn't matter HOW he was defeated.

derek, regarding the ongoing issues regarding the tactical map move visibility issue (ie at present it is hard to bloody impossible to see the valid move areas(and I have a fairly good range colour vision)), the simplest suggestion I can make is to 'invert' (ie change the sign of each of the three colour numbers (red,green & blue)) this would put a light outline on dark squares and a dark outline on light squares as well as it beig a high contrast colour difference that most vision imparements could probably detect, unlike the current 'method' that a lot of people can NOT detect.

harpo

They just need to reduce the transparency, the color itself isn't the problem. The indicator overlay is probably at like 90% transparency right now, which is why it's so hard to see on so many maps, if they drop that to like 40% or 30% the underlying terrain wouldn't matter much, even better they could redesign it to be not transparent at all, because honestly the terrain means nothing so it doesn't matter if it's hidden while you are making move orders.

Derek, we really need to fix/rework crossbows. In my current game, Gilden is fielding huge stacks of Marksmen armed with crossbow, which constitute bulk of his force. These guys cannot do more than 2-5 damage on ANY of my units. As I am starting to field plate mail paladins, he wont be able to hurt me more than clink-2 damage.

Should he be fielding bows, I could have taken at least some damage and casualties. But with crossbows? He´s essentially a paper tiger, nothing else.

Can we fix that, please? In my vision, crossbows should have:

- higher damage than bows (realistic)

- higher initiative penalty than bows (realistic - slow reloading)

- some armor-piercing ability, lets say 20%? (realistic - crossbow´s main purpose was to counter heavily armored knights)

- keep Powershot ability

This would essentialy make crossbowmen slow, heavy hitters usable againts armored targets. It would be also very interesting to implement some kind of range limit for crossbows in t-battles, which would mean you get heavy damage - armor piercing unit, but you need to move it close to frontline, which means higher risk of being caught in the brawl. But I am realist...so even the previous points would be fully sufficient

Please consider this...thx!

I second this. Crossbows in real life were the bane of knights in armor because those bolts would pierce their plates with ease and any peasant could be proficient with them (crossbows are much easier to aim than normal bows, they requires very little training).

Edit: they could also have a special ability that would mimic their real life counterpart; Preloaded. Preloaded would just mean crossbows have no initiative penalties on first turn because they are loaded in advance (something you can't do with bows), thus only need to pull the trigger to shoot. 

Sweet.

Patch isn't done but it is somewhat discouraging that there aren't any ui improvements listed yet.