Even with innovations of Beta 4 cities and economy still are too weak. They dont have much impact on gameplay and victory. What I see also from posts of other players, typical gameplay is next: spam pioneers (mostly to get mana shards), level up your sovereign, find equipment and destroy the AI with no effort on expert difficulty even without hiring an army. I'm forced to have mercy on the AI not to wipe it out during early-mid game just to postpone it falsely to get the feeling of later stages. AI feels like my pet on a map rather than opponent. I think most of these problems appear from the concept of weak defenceless cities.
Ways to solve these issues how I see it:
- Founding new city must be a costly investment from a player compared to outpost. Similarly, conquest of someones city must be much more difficult. Remember that satisfaction feeling of conquering AI's city after a long siege in Civ 4? FE doesn't have it at all. Conquest in FE is almost always easy and frustrating. Unless you play Ridiculous Difficulty.
- Default city defence must be stronger, either by stronger militia or high default bonuses for stationed units. How can a bear destroy a lvl 1 city? Its not realistic, neither playable. However finding a city near a layer of river drake still must be a huge gamble.
- Wall with destroyable gate and special power nods (like archer's towers) for defending units on a tactical map depending on a city level (If it is still possible to code). Penalty for attacker's archers.
- More spells to defend a city like wall of fire. I had frustrating situations with having 500 mana with no possibility to spend to save a city. Tremor, flame of fire and freeze do little job. I wish to have a spell something like +6 armor for 5 turns for defenders of the city. Lets call it "Defenders moral" for instance.
- More possibilities to increase growth and food capacitance with spells and buildings. Now I have always growth stagnation problem even with using all the available tools, especially playing empire, since they dont have life magic.
- High default penalty for movement inside enemies territory (I propose 0.5x movement). Now I can wipe out one faction with no effort just in 5-10 turns roughly at season 80. To prevent situations like this.
What do you think about it? How would you propose to solve addressed issues?
