mdonais

Join Date 01/2010

[Balance 952]Beating Insane

I just beat insane difficulty twice in a row with different character builds and thought I should post a bit about them so they can get brought in line with the other builds.

I custom made both characters of course and their factions. One was a death knight and one was just a knight with no spells.

Race: Tarth is the most powerful with +3 init and attack. You need the extra strength at low levels.

Faction: I always take all 4 weaknesses and take Quick, Lucky, Master Scouts, and 2 others. For my deathknight I took death worship for the amazing Corruption spell and for my non-caster I took heroic and scholars. Civics would be good here also.

Of the faction options Master Scouts I always take on all characters, it is the strongest choice by far and does 2 great things.

Profession: I took armorer for both. I think that general would be ok too, but not quite as good. Warlock is ok for some builds but casting damage spells is a bad strategy at impossible difficulty because everything has triple HPs.

Talents: Both took Hardy, Discipline, Wealthy, Brilliant and the crown equipment.

My deathknight spent his last 2 points on rank 1 death magic. My non-caster took tactician and might.

I took clumsy as my weakness. It is easy to work around and having it makes combat more fun for me.

Of these only Wealthy is really overpowered. (start with 1000 gold). It should be 400 instead.

The crown equipment is great if you have lots of spells but it was terrible for these 2 guys and I might skip it next time.

Any spell casting line except death should take the crown though.

Map Settings:

Small map, 3 opponents, insane difficulty, dense, fast, dense, dense.

I didn't use ctrl-N to reload starting location but I would have if I had zero essence or something really bad. I had 1 essence in one game and 2 in the other. Essence makes your researching of leather armor faster since you cast inspiration on the first turn.

Strategy:

You need to split your 2 starting heroes and level them both up (exp between heroes is split if they group up). To succeed on this you need to buy them full leather armor, then shields, then horses or wolves.

Get leather armor first, then get civics to rush buildings, then get horses.

Rush out some settlers and some cheap buildings. Save enough money to buy 2 horses of course. I save a bit more than that.

Kill computers if they got a bad start and you can wipe them out. Otherwise don't make war with them.

Late Game:

The richest computer will research super duper magic platemail. You need to save your money to buy a set or two of this. I was able to visit him and buy the best pieces. You can't research it yourself because you took all 4 weaknesses when designing your faction.

To shop from him just walk into his lands while not at war with him.

The computer will have infinite troops, so try not to fight him. I won both times with quest victory which is fairly fast and fun and it means you can basically ignore the computer.

Both times I built zero units and recruiting only the hero that starts in sight of your town.

In one game I killed 2 of my 3 opponents and tried to kill the third but he had infinite stacks of infinite guys and he killed all of my undefended towns. When I won with my non-caster I just had 2 heroes and zero other stuff and got quest victory. I was level 25 and had the best sword in the game. It gave me the bear special attack where if I hit I get to swing again until I miss. But I lose 6 accuracy per swing or something.

When i won with my deathknight I had lots of towns and 9 death nodes because I was using corruption to turn the nodes all to death.

Right before the final quest fight I sacrificed every town so they had zero population and I spent 500 mana destroying the boss he can't walk to the door it turns out. I could have beaten him other ways though with my 48 point drain life and great debuffs.

Thats it, I think damage casters and summoners are a bit weak and would not have won at this difficulty. Units could have won eventually I think they get strong if the game goes long.

Hope it helps balance or other players considering harder difficulties.

Mike D.

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Both times I built zero units and recruiting only the hero that starts in sight of your town.

this is absolutely wrong, and a proof that the game needs much more tweaking than it's generally agreed.

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Great input! It sounds like those games were fun while sidestepping a lot of the content (building armies, researching high-powered stuff etc.)

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Quoting Nehanski,

reply 1

Both times I built zero units and recruiting only the hero that starts in sight of your town.

this is absolutely wrong, and a proof that the game needs much more tweaking than it's generally agreed.

I agree as well - the Heroes are way too powerful or the troops are just too weak - either way it needs to be balanced. How about only letting 1 Hero in a group. That would affect the way the battles will go.

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I think this is a unnecessary and artificial cap, which won't solve problems in the long run, as heroes will level up - even faster - on their own.

When in doubt, look at the ideal - and by that I mean Master of Magic. There champions weren't available from the start, they could spawn and offer your services during the campaign - if you had enough fame to intrigue them and money to hire.

This is partly doable in FE - we have the influence resource, which recruitable heroes require - and a lot of it to boot, not only to hire, but also to upkeep (don't forget gold too). Specific champs could also cost other resources - say, an ironeer master blacksmith needs a steady supply of iron, while an elemental hero (everything's possible, right?) has to be given mana so he can remain on this world. There could be even more fancy things, like a really powerful lord of death needing units sacrificed to him on a constant basis. This would also help to flesh out champions, who - while having backstories - are mostly similar. These heroes could either spawn as an event ("The fable mage Casimir th Porridge arrives on your court and offers his services... for the right price"), or, for those more conservative - stand on a tile and wait for the quickest bidder to hire him.

What's certain is that the level 1 hero near your starting spot has to go. It is he who makes the early game a breeze.

That leaves us the sovereign, who - while all alone now in the beginning - can still beat up mites, darklings, bear cubs and similar pawns to a pulp, and level like mad. One thing is slowing down experience gain. But there still needs to be an incentive to gather a few units rather than venture out alone - or maybe the other way around, make it simply dangerous for him (tougher, more aggressive monsters; crippling injuries on 'death').

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Quoting Nehanski,

reply 1

Both times I built zero units and recruiting only the hero that starts in sight of your town.

this is absolutely wrong, and a proof that the game needs much more tweaking than it's generally agreed.

Cities are too safe & secure ungarded, monsters are not aggressive enough.

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I don't like the 'one hero per group' idea much as it's sometimes fun to create a band of heroes.

I think alot of it is improving the AI and balance fine tuning - I also think something needs to be done about buying things in rivals shops, it's kind of exploitative to pick up store items from the AI - maybe there needs to be a treaty in place to buy tier2 and tier3 equipment - also maybe the AI should get some of the gold from your purchases at their stores (and vice versa or course).

Also if the AI has such vast armies why havent they attacked you? Why haven't they gone on the master quest or built the mastery towers? It makes me wonder ow hard the AI is trying to win the game sometimes.

Also I think there's a need for finetuning xp requirements and the difficulty of monsters too plus the balancing of options for faction/character customisation at the start of the game.

Still some way to go I guess

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Quoting DGB246,

reply 7

In one of my victories I had zero towns, the AI took every single one of them. I may have had one outpost left total.

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Ah Ok so you played on without the cities. Did the AI try to hunt down your sovereign afterwards then? It's good to know that the AI didnt just sit back and let you do a quest win at least.

I'm thinking that maybe there should be a plunder mechanic where if you lose cities, the attacker captures some of your resources and if the Ai captures all your cities then it captures all your resources too (including mana) - that might help things a little. This would also work in reverse too - if you capture cities then you steal resources from the AI

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Yeah, I am playing again with more builds, but many of the strategies I used remain the same. Like rushing leather armor and shopping from my opponents.

Focusing on 1-2 heroes. I could try to build an army but it would be dwarfed by the computer armies honestly.

I am using various spells this time and it is nice but not essential.

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you shouldn't be able to shop unless you have sone sirt of pact. and unless you have an alliancethere should be a premium on the cost of goods.say 50%. this could be alleviated with trade or economic pacts and warm or close relations.

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You choose a build that's extremely clever, very precise, and laid out with a specific path to success. You plunk it down on a small map, where the AI's huge potential remains just that, and isn't going to have a chance to develop all the benefits they've been given on Insane. Then, you win. I don't necessarily see this as a reason for re-balancing, but an instance of how a smart player can "game" the game given enough controls over length, monster density, size of map, choice of traits, etc. I'm curious whether you could pull this off on a large map. It may just be me, but I think that would be a better test of your build on Insane. And if you still succeed, I wouldn't think it means re-balancing was required, but that it's possible to be highly successful and very unsuccessful builds.

And that you probably should be one of those people who will make a FAQ after the game is released.

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@Glazunov

I'm sure he could do this on a big map too, all he needs to do is find the quest locations for the master quest - OK the statues might be spread around more but it wouldn't be much harder this way

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Quoting DGB246,

reply 13

@Glazunov

I'm sure he could do this on a big map too, all he needs to do is find the quest locations for the master quest - OK the statues might be spread around more but it wouldn't be much harder this way

All I'm suggesting is that on a large map the AI would have an opportunity to realize all the benefits from many of its traits. It's the difference between killing a future expert assassin when he/she's 6 years old, and killing them when they're 30. The AI enemies would have a much greater chance to develop, and grow.

But again, it's also all about any very savvy player being able to guy the system. There isn't a foolproof method of preventing that, and I don't think efforts should be made to prevent a build that permits it, or a build that makes it incredibly difficult to win. I just think the player should determine how easy or hard they want their builds to be.

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