what I mean is: my last MA session was at easy/easy. my sov moved 2 tiles away from the capitol and got killed by a gang of syndicate baddies. now I do enjoy a challenge, facing a harsh world and I do think vanilla is too forgiving, but come on. the game is supposed to be fun. it seems your definition of fun is different than most people

Right, there are some changes in the latest version. The base Hp for Sovs and heroes has been increased. If you feel some specific thing is poorly balanced, we can deal with it, but you need to be very specific. For one thing, why did you move so close to a syndicate scouting party without a few meat shields to back you up? That is your mistake. The cost of that mistake is 50% of your mana and 8 or so turns stuck in your city to heal. It's not a huge deal. Spend those 8 turns to train up some militia. The world is balanced towards the player using the maximum number of units in their army. 

One of the core problems with the vanilla game is that trained units are optional. Soloing isn't difficult. Part of playing this mod is that you have to evolve as a player to do well. Next time I bet you bring a whole army to fight any syndicate army. Next time I bet you don't end your turn adjacent to stronger foes. Next time I bet you don't die. The difference then will be that your learned skill makes your experience more rewarding. You will soon come to despise the Syndicate and hunt them down. The slight they gave you on turn one will be repayed in full. Their kind will be slaughtered and fed to your dogs. That is the kind of immersion that builds from a challenging world. It hurts at first, but then you grow. Something sadly missing in most games these days.

@crimosongekko, give it up, please. I want it the way it develops right now. 

@sean, check out if you can add achievement of winning in your mod at certain difficulty

Yea, wild world should be dangerous. If you are not ready, don't move out of your city. 

@sentinemodo: you're free to provide your feedback and I'll provide mine, tyvm.

@sean: good point. still, this was easy/easy and on turn 0 I had a nasty lair with lots of nasty enemies right next door. if those guys wanted they could have come for me and wiped me out come turn 3, with me having no way to survive. and if they DON'T come for me, that's not immersive because... why didn't they wipe me out as soon as they had the chance?

I think the strength of the world still starts too high, give the player a bit of a break early on so you can actually do some scouting. just allow a short span of time for the player to prepare early on, so you can train some militia for the upcoming onslaught. as it stands, having to cower behind walls while you do that is simply not fun. I think the level of challenge should be on the same level as the player's power, i.e. a fair fighting chance instead of immediately feeling like a bug about to get squashed.

if you play raging barbs in civ4 you won't have a big stack of enemies right next to you on turn 0. but you know they'll be coming for you soon in force and you gotta prepare asap. that's an example of a good, hard challenge that still feels fair, i.e. you do have the tools to handle the menace and it's up to you to do the right choices. but starting right next to big stacks of enemies feels overdone imho.

@bpalczewski: I just think "don't move out of the city" is not good design. what is the focus here, a fun gameplay or proving that you're a l33t gamer? the latter is just pointless in a single player game.

Any feedback is good. If you say easy is too hard, I'll make some special stuff for easy. I don't actually play it, so I'll take your word on it with no hesitation. I'll push back monster spawns for you and see what else will help you build more armies. I'll have a real gaming computer next week with any luck. From there I can start up my LP's again to show users some good strategies. That should help alot.

that's very kind of you Sean. don't take my word without hesitation though, maybe it's just me who sucks at the game

I just wanted to provide my impressions for discussion, and you're right any feedback is good. I'll keep following development, playing it more and posting my opinions. keep up the good work!

While its a good idea, I often find small increments of change is the best. (Keep them rookies bleeding)...
Random sidenote: Damn I hate when my game crashes

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Isn't there a difficulty level below Easy? If Easy is too hard then just drop down a difficulty level.

I started playing Sean's mod because I like the strategic depth he has added to the game, regardless of how difficult he has made it. I usually play on normal/normal since I'm mostly competent when it comes to min/maxing and knowing which battles to fight. I do admit my current game is on 1.0.008, so some of his more recent changes haven't gotten to me yet.

Pretty far through on a Resoln summoner playthrough.  Binding - so long as you are active in seeking out shards (which you probably are) - by itself is enough to tide you over til mid game at the least.

Playing this mod is truly painful, I like it! - where the pain comes intentionally by design. Where pain comes from bugs:

Strong supporter of that one! I just tried that tool myself with this mod's files and there are indeed several files corrupted by copypaste imps and tag demons.

Heal Injury also was severly missed in my last playthrough. instead of it you get massregeneration when you select it on level up.

arcane bolt seems to calculate with double the spell damage bonus:

at lvl 4 it should do 4*3*1,25(path of the arcanist) =15dmg, it does 18dmg

at lvl 5: 5*3*1,25 = 19, it does 23dmg

at lvl 5 with evokerI:  5*3*1,5 = 23 dmg, it does 34 dmg

Edit: or is this intended to make the mage stronger for the higher levels ?

Mage scaling is too much right now. Too many +25% bonuses. We are working on a better scale.

Is there anyway to give players a warning or an ETA on monster lair upgrades?

I know we're under time pressure to clear them out, it would be nice to know when lairs are going to upgrade so we can get an idea of how much time we have to work with. I've had a few occasions where my army is finally strong enough to take on a lair I passed by earlier, but as I travel to it it spawns enemies way out of my league a turn before I can loot it.

No way to show it. You can make notes on the average lair spawn times.

Minor update. Version 1.01.014b is up. Changelog updated.

Basically I used an XML program to get rid of some tag errors and lower case issues. I probably didn't get all of them, so post it if you see it. Also some minor adjustments to lair settings.

Minor minor update. Version 1.01.014c is up. Changlog updated.

I somehow made changes and then they were deleted. They are back.

Sean: I am planning to start a through play-through on insane, should i wait for any important update before i start? 

Yes. There are new mechanics and better spell balance coming in tonight as soon as I get the files updated. Also got the Trog traits to show up.

Sean - any particular faction you are looking for some feedback on? Will start one up once your .15 update is out. I'm leaning towards Resoln but willing to play any of the vanilla sovs (excluding Karavox since I just played him).

Play Tarth if you feel like it. Trogs, Tarth, Resoln, Magnar would all be good.

Version 1.01.015 is up. Changelog updated. 

There were some staff modding things we wanted to get in tonight, but once again we are defeated by a pack of hardcode demons. Despite our Tinkerer's genius mind, we are right back where we started and Steve is dead. Oh, you guys didn't know about Steve helping with the mod? Well, he's dead now. So is Blair and Jeremy, but that was for a totally unrelated event. We don't really put the interns in the OP unless they survive for a week or two.

Actually, most of Jeremy is probably still in the freezer if anyone has a resurrection spell. 

I believe the arcanist resist elements ability has a little mistake and is (the one that is supposed to give 20% to fire, frost, and lightning resist) is not working at the moment for that reason. In your coreabilities.xml you have the variables written for this ability as "UnitStat_FireResist", "UnitStat_FrostResist", etc. The working variables are "UnitStat_ResistFire, "UnitStat_ResistFrost", etc. I believe. (As seen in the racial resistances later in the file.)

("...MagicResist" is the spell resistance variable though, lol.)

Thanks for the report. I'll make a check and do a minor update. Hope it didn't ruin your game.