Difficulty spike in normal - Grr Magnar.

Played my first game of Enchantress and was having a good time. I spread out and founded a few cities along a river and made contact with 3-4 out of the 7 kingdoms. The rating was fairly close. I am not sure how these numbers are calculated but I had a score of about 35-45 and the other 3 had about 30. So I thought I was doing just fine. I was concentrating on a mix of Civilization upgrades and Warfare and felt I was exploring well and got to about lvl 6 on my champion. I established trade treaties with all 3 of the nearby kingdoms. Things seemed great. I kinda like to play a "sleeping giant' sort of style, where I build my infastructure and army then unleash hell.

THEN! I explored a bit north and bumped into Magnar, and a couple other kingdoms. I settled a city nearby but did not walk into their territory at all. Almost immediately Magnar declares war on me, then a few turns later 2 out of the 3 kingdoms I had trade treaties with declared war on me saying how dare I fight their good Magnar friends. So in a matter of about 10 turns I had 4 kingdoms at war with me. And for what? I really like to build relationships with kingdoms and have a little more depth than the only form of diplomacy is eventual war.

I am a new player as this was my first game, but this just seemed out of left field. The diplomacy just felt way off. Should there not be some indication for the player where I stand with them? I was friendly or neutral with most, atleast I thought. I had hoped there would be some warning the kingdoms would give me, like they would show their frustration with me demand coin, or whatever. There was none of that. Only communication I got from them was war dec.

Magnar at this stage of the game had well over a 100 in score. As a last ditch effort, knowing I could not fight magnar on his terms, I decided to push into Kraxis territory as he was the weakest and closest. Thinking I could take a few cities, build up my army and defend Magnar as long as I could.

But it didnt happen. Magnar pushed in took my capital and that was gg. Magnar final score was 228 and the majority of other kingdoms ranged from 44-88.

Afterwards I looked at the chart showing all the colored lines. Magnar, purple, had shot straight up about mid way through the game, I mean a very large distance while all the other kingdoms were relatively neck and neck. Magnar as points go were all about the same level according to the chart then bam magnar's point score doubled and maybe tripled at what looked like in a few turns.

My question is, why and how? How did this kingdom gain an almost 200% "point" gain compared to the average of all other kingdoms in a matter of turns? I mean literally his chart went straight up. Is there some research he founded and was able to increase his army? Is there some uber gear or research? If so is it then mandatory that I shoot straight for that too? If so, does that seem balanced?

My play style is not so aggressive. I don't like playing that way. That's the reason I don't play civ5 because it all about war eventually (least thats how it was when I played at release). All civs are so eager to fight, it felt more like a pure war game, action and fighting oriented. I was hoping elemental was a little more deeper than that. I don't like games that seem like they have a deep strategy in diplomacy but when it comes down to it you better just go way aggressive and kill them all as fast as possible. I hope this game caters to different play styles. Some days I may want to go pure aggressive, others I may want to turtle, etc. Does elemental allow differing playstyles? Or is it all about how fast you can build up an army? I want diplomacy, powerful civ techs, espionage, "culture" expansion etc, in other words I want other forms of winning besides being forced to go down warfare as FAST as possible and to expand as fast as possible.

I am by no means a veteran elemental player as I stated, so I will play more games and see how it goes, I was just surprised on the difficulty spike. It very well could be that I just sucked so bad! Just seemed strange that 1 out of 7 kingdoms would out pace us so badly. I assumed by keeping up and being slightly ahead of the 3-4 neighboring kingdoms that I was doing ok! Haha.

In the end I still had fun!

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Magnar may have captured an enemy capitol or something. Population has a big impact on score and I think magnar are the slaver, they gain population by razing cities or something.

Also, I think since Magnar was so much more powerful then you, that is why they declared war and others on good terms with them did so as well.

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I think I needed to scout more. I may have got too comfortable with my neighbors for too long without finding the remaining kingdoms.

Magnar must have been taking neighboring kingdoms. What a bully...

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Not necessarily. Power rating is currently determined largely by city and army size. What this means in a game against Magnar, or any Quendar-based custom factions you may make, is that they can train large groups of cheap, comparatively weak slaves. What's more, these slaves have no upkeep costs. This means that whenever Magnar decides he wants an army, he can make one on the cheap, and quickly outproduce you and your troops.

How do you counter this? High-quality troops. Give your soldiers as much armor and extra gear as you can afford, and march them right to his cities. Even if he does outnumber you, your better-trained and -equipped troops should be able to cut his forces down to size.

Does elemental allow differing playstyles? Or is it all about how fast you can build up an army?

Until this most recent patch (pre-.983), I was able to win without ever going to war with another faction. The AI was massively beefed up this patch as far as aggressiveness and diplomacy goes, and as this is still the beta, this is likely to be toned down in the lower difficulty levels.

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I hear you loud and clear, Skulrake.

The problem is, as I see it, that your relation to other civs is dependent on your power rating.

If you don't have a lot of military, which I normally don't, and you didn't have either, you will see the -4 in the relations window, just because you're weak. This is obviously an implementation made for warmongers.

In the recent patch, relations could be further worsened by having a bad standing with a civ's friend (a la Civ).

This means that the powerful civs will have all the friends and the weak civs will have all enemies. And seeing as other civs will always have more units than you, on higher difficulty settings, you will always end up being the one to be declared war to. Thereby making diplomacy style play increasingly difficult on higher levels.

I find it annoying that, just because I only founded two cities and don't have a standing army of tons of obsolete units, I should be declared war to, by ALL civilisations.

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In most games there will be one AI player that does better than all the rest. It has to do with being more aggressive with expansion and also having a big piece of land all to itself.

As far as I know you can't play how you want really. You have to beat the AI at its own game. I really hope that with future balance patches they create a larger set of viable strategies.

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Really interesting! Thanks for the replies. There is another recent topic here that is very similar https://forums.elementalgame.com/432833

It seems many players are experiencing this. I hope balances will come into play. I don't like the playstyle I am being forced into. It is narrowing an otherwise open/sandboxy type of potential this game can have as far as strategy goes.

I think of galciv2, I remember being able to build up my empire slowly, develope relationships and be made aware of potential threats well in advance. And I felts I could approach a long term strategy on my own terms.

Here I feel I am going to have to figure out how to beat the AI at its own game which narrows all other possibilities. I am not a hardcore gamer and I have no patience to fiddle with figuring out subtle game mechanics and how to maximize them so I can win.

There seems to be no consequence for war. What if there is some kind of "United Nations". Just because a kingdom is powerful does not make him likable, I mean how can a war monger have so many allies? In reality the smaller kingdoms would unite. There doesn't seem to be an leeway in this area.

There should be lasting consequences for the decisions we make. Right now it just seems that diplomacy should just be removed and everyone just start out automatically at war with each other. Let's just jump right to it shall we? Haha, cause Conquest seems to be what the game wants us to do. Then it is more of a real time strategy game about building up your forces and taking the bad guys out.

I hope they can inject some flexibility in there somehow. I am not smart enough or experienced enough with the game yet to give definitive and precise feedback on what can be done or even if the devs feel it a concern. But I will got back and play more games and see what info I can glean.

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