Trying out my first game with your mod Seanw3. Expert / Expert settings.
Initial Notes:
1. A lot more starting money / mana. Full armour on sovereign.
2. More starting HP.
3. Procipinee in the Sovereign select screen only shows life magic, which I was disappointed in but accepted. In game she starts with everything but air? Ahh I see it comes from Archsummoner trait.
First Turn: Pressed control-N a few times, got a 4/3/2 with clay, crystal and a fire shard nearby. No woods or river unfortunately, can't win them all. Cast enchanted hammers, inspiration, started harvesting the clay. Which builds much faster than I am used too, 2 turns? Save.
Hire Othello. He's in full armour, which is nice. And only costs ten (!) gildar to recruit. he has Altarian blood for +50% (!) exp bonus. I notice his Athican Leather Cuirass has much higher stats than normal, and his diagger does as well.
Typo: Dagger shows '+2, should probably remove the '.
I find a bandit lair and there's like 400000000 bandits lurking in / nearby. Umm wow. I also find a Dark Wizard, that's not very good either.
Open the spellbook, notice Raise / Lower land are much more expensive. Summon a warg to help out Procipinee.
Open resarch, notice Restoration is gone. Study the trees more carefully. Lots of changes.
Possible error? 'Town Archery Range' shows up under both Training and Banditry? Actually I find a fair amount of things like this, including Champions armour being under both Warfare / Armor and Magic / Arcane armor. Why?
Random? I have three of the four of the random spellbooks, Flame / Frost / Wind. Intentional or just lucky?
Given the nearby bandits I choose to start researching Training right away.
Starting out: I find a Black Widow and it has 108 (!) HP? Hmm. Definitely need some troops. Start researching Civics. Begin training Spearmen, notice unusual traits. Investigate.
The bandit lair spawns some roamers, who are heading towards my city. Set up for defense. They roam off again. Buff Procipinee with all available buffs. Notice Warg has 84 (!) HP. OK HP increased for a lot of stuff no more !'s. Move out w Proc / Warg / one Spearmen to try and engage the Bandits.
End turn takes noticably longer than in vanilla. Still quick (quad core, 8 GB ram etc) but longer.
Engage bandits, notice that I have Stinking mud, even though I do not have Earth/Water 2. Resolve to look at spellbook some more. Notice I have in-combat regeneration, wow did I miss that spell in Vanilla. Used it all the time back in beta. Getting some graphics artifacts, not sure why. Will reload game after this battle. Spearmen survive but it's a very close thing. I used a ton of mana in this battle, resolve to get my fire shard up and running asap. Win the battle, new path choices. Choose Mage for Procipinee, noticing that the path has been changed dramatically. Retreat to town to heal up a little.
During the battle I used Burning Hands on some Bandits, and noticed they had an ongoing damage effect applied, sort of like poison? This appears to not be documented anywhere.
Find a Legendary Broadsword in the first loot location I check.
Uh, there's a very large Drake nest site 10 squares from my starting loc? And it's completely infested. There is literally nothing I can do about that right now, or for quite a while most likely. I can't kill the bandit spawn either. Ugh.
Researching towards Mining for more production.
Backed by two spearmen, Othollo takes a look at the spider.
I find a spot to start my second city, but there's a lot of enemies around. Makes me nervous. Some named Wildings are nearby? Teluath the Magi?
The Drake spawn kicks out a stack of Pack Drakes. 1053 HP? Come on now.
Othollo kills the spider but it's a real barely thing. Burning hands (x2) carries the day. Both spearmen survive but they are critically injured. I choose to try Path of the Warrior for Othollo.
Misc thoughts - every enemy seems to have a jillion HP. Burning hands is my main offense right now.
Procipinee kills the Wildings, unfortunately her Spearmen fall in battle. At L3 I choose Fire Disciple, since I have a fire shard to help pump those spells a little. Begin training a pioneer for expansion. Find Irwan, who has Path of the Cleric. Neat.
Find an Umberdroth, Air Shrills, Air Elemental, Fire Shrills and Knights of Asok. Geez this place is infested.
Gatherer Spider army, 1000 HP? WTH man, this stuff is just unkillable at this stage with that many HP.
Find some more Wildings. Wow they have a lot of movement with Charge. Finally an enemy that has realistic HP (12-19 ea).
Slag army. Zillion HP same as everything else. Kind of depressing honestly.
Othollo gets attacked by some wildings. He wins but they kill his spearmen. Queen Procipinee gets attacked by the Gatherer Spiders and dies horribly. They have 260 x 4 HP. Seems ridiculous. Othollo gets swarmed and killed by some water shrills. I decide to call this one a day and try to restart on easier settings.
