[.86] Bugs & Balance Issues

from Elemental Forums

Balance:

-Ignys give somewhere around 80 exp each and are weak. killed 4 on 6th season and rocketed from lv1 to 5.

-Fire/ice elementals are too weak. They are too hard/expensive too summon and give too much exp/loot. They are considered strong but shadow wargs are as tough.

-Shadow Wargs are ridiculous. Like summoning a young ogre with 6 movement. Probably just change it too a weaker warg. (love summoners by the way gj)

-Lv 7/9 enemy faction magi champions are easy too kill and take spellstaffs from. Every early mid game my Sov + 2 spearmen kill them. They only have lv1 and rarely lv2 spells

-Monsters not aggressive enough. Unless a lair is touching one of my cities they never get attacked. Monsters should rarely even attack from +4 tiles away. Borders Should feel threatened throughout the game.

-Impulsive is OP for mage. Please don't allow mages too double/triple cast spells first turn. Make Impulsive an Assassin trait. They need good talents. Mage do not. You could move wisdom to general traits like strength.

-Fireball awkward and ridiculous at 3 turn chargeup. Just nerf overpower Aoe spells and Evoker

-Almost all champions have less talents than levels. Seems to correspond with old champion levels, lv 3 has 2, lv5 has 3 ect. Makes hired champions weak and horrible mages. Purchasable apprentice robes and a basic stave could also help mage champions, AI always equips it champions on wargs and armours them up.

-No way to defend against pillar of fire and tremor. AI is a joke when I can reduce armies to half health before combat.

-Mage Staffs underpowered. The Initiative bonus for Daggers make better weapons for casters than staffs. Most staffs aren't even ranged. Magic staffs need to be made ranged and to give a good boost to casting spells/Int/Spellmastery, otherwise fast casting with a dagger will always be better. Only staffs ive gotten just do cold/fire/vs elemental melee dmg. Spellstaff does +mana 25% Tac Spell Dmg

-War colleges is unlocked by higher education, a late game tech. In the games ive played their is a huge pause in military tech as I research the civilization tree till higher education.

-AI spammed dross archers till the very end game. They commonly had a stack of dross/spearmen armies like 4-6 deep and they were all the same, making it impossible to tell how many armies there actually where till they attacked me. This is really annoying, plz make it so they cant stack armies or at least show how many armies are stacked.

-Yew Longbowman are much better than even toughest magi. Magi need reworked.

Bugs:

-Ogres/drakes forced by outpost influence off their lair

-Played a game without quests. No quest locations spawned Found 1 dragon statue

- Upgraded Najaborn to leather armour, two turns later I had option to upgrade both weapons and armour. Units in cities have false ability to upgrade. Doing so changes weapon (not upgrade)  and causes portrait to go black

-One of the kingdom boar mounted champions has a heal ability that doesn't work. She moves 1 tile and casts the spell, the art appears on the tile she was standing on and she doesn't heal.

-Screen moves to next unit group when battle starts. Annoying

-All Magic arfifacts are considered worse than their non magical versions. As a result units will not upgrade into them and I need to make custom units to equip them.

-An explore the ruins quest that spawns scrap golems and a temple to explore is confusing. Once the temple is cleared, it just says "Now explore the ruins" and the quest end. Apparantly giving you legendary armour without telling you about it.  Also at least 1 scrap golem spawned in the water.

 

Ty for reading

4,630 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Good ideas here! Thankfully many are simple balancing issues.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the weapons boosting initiative is one of the biggest problems. No weapon should boost initiative unless it's magical! Instead base initiative should be increased to the highest weapon and all weapons should lower initiative.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I've also had a game in 0.86 where no quest locations spawned.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sarudak, reply 2
I think the weapons boosting initiative is one of the biggest problems. No weapon should boost initiative unless it's magical! Instead base initiative should be increased to the highest weapon and all weapons should lower initiative.
End of Sarudak's quote

This

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sarudak, reply 2
I think the weapons boosting initiative is one of the biggest problems. No weapon should boost initiative unless it's magical! Instead base initiative should be increased to the highest weapon and all weapons should lower initiative.
End of Sarudak's quote

Seems like easy logical fix.  Staffs still need to be ranged and boost actual spells of course.

 

*New Bug: Upgraded Najaborn to leather armour, two turns later I had option to upgrade both weapons and armour even though I didn't have the tech. Upgrading them turned portrait black and gave them hammers, even though I pressed upgrade armour.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Shadow wargs work for me quite well as a summoner...Very useful unit.

 

Beside this some good points here.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top




-Fire/ice elementals are too weak. They are too hard/expensive too summon and give too much exp/loot.


End of quote

 

I don't think they are too hard/expensive to summon. They don't do too bad when added to an army. Though a summoned ice elemental only moves 2 squares. He would be much more useful with 3. So then increase the fire elemental from 3 to 4.

 

The ice elemental's ability to cast slow doesn't seem appropriate. Rather have him have a big sword and get melee kills.

 

Leveling up a fire elemental doesn't seem to make them much tougher. Have their health increase more?

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top


-Monsters not aggressive enough. Unless a lair is touching one of my cities they never get attacked. Monsters should rarely even attack from +4 tiles away.

End of quote

I find the monster movement on the strategic map in general very awkward and unsatisfying to play against. Some of my thoughts here:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/416547

 


-Impulsive is OP for mage. Please don't allow mages too double/triple cast spells first turn. Make Impulsive an Assassin trait. They need good talents. Mage do not.

End of quote

Great idea

 


-No way to defend against pillar of fire and tremor. AI is a joke when I can reduce armies to half health before combat
End of quote

Aren't those own territory only? I like how fighting on your own terrain gives you an advantage

 


-Mage Staffs underpowered. The Initiative bonus for Daggers make better weapons for casters than staffs. Most staffs aren't even ranged. Magic staffs need to be made ranged and to give a good boost to casting spells/Int/Spellmastery, otherwise fast casting with a dagger will always be better.
End of quote

The initiative boni of nonmagical weapons for weapon actions is a bit silly. My preferred solution would be to lower all weapons initiative, so that non-magical weapons can only give mali, no boni. Wielding a dagger should not be faster than wielding nothing.

 

 

 


The ice elemental's ability to cast slow doesn't seem appropriate. Rather have him have a big sword and get melee kills.
End of quote

Why isn't that appropriate? sound's cool to me.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Xenomath, reply 8
Aren't those own territory only? I like how fighting on your own terrain gives you an advantage
End of Xenomath's quote

I like that as well, however fact remains every lv1 fire mage can cast pillar of fire from anywhere and late game their is no reason not too and no defense against it. OP, game need more protection from elements magic

 

Quoting Xenomath, reply 8
The initiative bonus of nonmagical weapons for weapon actions is a bit silly. My preferred solution would be to lower all weapons initiative, so that non-magical weapons can only give mali, no boni. Wielding a dagger should not be faster than wielding nothing.
End of Xenomath's quote

Problem of a small initiative bonus or even neutral intitiative being better for mages than 90% of staffs would remain.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I think its silly that holding a dagger makes you cast faster... your spell casting should be at your base initiative and ignore modifiers. Magic is not something that you should rush because you are in a hurry.

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, but they don't differentiate initiative between actions, so I don't think we can fix it that way.

I totally agree with the initiative penalties. I figured the same thing in my last game. I thought, "sweet, magic staves for my mage champion! What!? -6 initiative?! No wonder I wasn't able to cast as fast. Ok, back to that +6 initiative dagger then..."

***Also, did anyone else notice that the animation for attacking with a magic staff takes about 10 seconds to resolve? I attacked with a cold staff and though the game had frozen up.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Some good ideas here.

Some (many?) staffs definitely should give at least a weak ranged attack.

Weapon initiative bonuses should be revamped as suggested so that the fastest weapons are 0 and anything slower is a negative. Some magical weapons/items could possibly have + initiative boosts.

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Bugs and Balance Updated!

It seems like game is moving away from their encumberance system with this patch. Could you see unit encumberance before because i never noticed it when I was equipping platemail to infantry (umbar).

Which is too bad because it seems like overall weight is a better way to balance light weapons than initiative penalties and bonuses on individual weapons. Correctly implemented it could even make assasins more competitive by stopping heavy armour dodging.