[BUG] After final release The Decalon does nothing unless you also give your faction Enchanters

The "Spellbooks" tech still requires "Enchanters". Changing it to "TheDecalon" should fix it.

Fixed, thanks.

It's not fixed as of today.  Custom faction with both Decalon and Enchanters selected...does not provide access to the spellbooks in game.

They probably fixed it in 1. oh 1.  No patches have been pushed yet.  But we can hope for one next week.

You can also go into the CoreAbilities.xml file and change it, yourself.  If that's something you don't want to bother with, you can open it up, find this line in the DecalonAbility section:

<Cost>2</Cost>

...and change the 2 to 1.  Then save, and exit.  At least it'll knock a point off the unnecessary cost.

Or you could open Techs_Amarian.xml, find the Spellbooks tech and change "Enchanters" to "TheDecalon".

I can't access the game files at the moment, but doesn't that leave you needing Enchanters if you want to get arcane monoliths and the scrying pool?  In which case, you're still paying 3 points, more than under the beta where these and the spellbooks were all part of Enchanters, for 2 points.  I'm not sure if that's the way Derek wanted to go--I thought Decalon was going to be 1, and Enchanters was going to be changed to 1.

Yes, but it fixes the bug to need both Enchanters and The Decalon to get access to the spellbooks. If you want the spellbooks and the scrying pool, you would still need both traits, but that is the intention. The cost is still the same, as the available creation points has been increased, too.

Ah, so Derek intends to make the arcane monolith + scrying pool + spellbooks cost 3 now, instead of 2.  That's where I was wrong.

Mind, I think it's a dreadful comedown for poor Procipinee.  First she lost traits when the cost of each spellbook apprenticeship doubled several betas ago, and now the racial traits her faction favors will cost more.  Soon she'll be reduced to peddling magical trinkets from kingdom to kingdom, or selling them on eBay.

I should point out that when devs to a game say that a bug has been fixed, they do not mean that it is instantly fixed by magic across all copies of the game.  That is impossible.  They mean they have fixed it on their end and when the next patch is released, that fix will be included in that patch.

All factions have been updated to work with the new faction trait costs.  The points each faction gets by default has gone from 2 to 3, however only one faction weakness can now be selected (so a maximum of four points if you choose a weakness).  The factions whose traits went up by 1 point also had faction points go up by 1 point.  Yithril got an extra trait (Tough) because none of his trait picks went up in cost.

I think an OP combo is The Decalon + Enchanters + Master Scouts (with one weakness).  Arcane Monoliths (no pioneers required for outposts), Spellbooks (can upgrade Champions' and Sov's spellcasting abilities), Scrying Pools (Conclaves can always have at least 2 Essence), Master Scouts (no terrain costs, including rivers).  The Stealth part is not as useful as the terrain penalty eliminating part, you just need to more careful where you end turns (so it's a good idea to micromanage unescorted Pioneers ;-)).  I'm going to make a seperate post for the suggestion I posted on the other thread regarding breaking up Master Scouts - I like the concept, but I think you should have to pick some terrains as preferences for better movement rather than have all terrains included.  Even without Stealth Master Scouts could still be currently the best faction trait pick in the game.  I think Tarth should start with Forest Scouts and Stealth rather than getting a 1-point move on all terrain.

If this is in response to me--please.  You're wrecking a good bit of satire.

On a slightly more serious note, I've known from the start that all factions got point compensations for the changes, but continue to regret that the human player doesn't.  I suggested once that Derek might consider using a system similar to that of MOO II, in which the player can really use all the points he/she wants for spellbooks and traits, and multiple weaknesses, for that matter: it then gets factored into a final score.  So somebody could take all available spellbooks at expert, plus brilliant, scholar, and hardy, but their score at game's end would probably be less than their age.  When they hit puberty.

It's all about letting players play the way they want.  There's nothing wrong with a lack of balance, if that's how someone wants to play it.  Just check off a box, and gain access to this.

And now that I've given my very brief soapbox speech, I'll get off the thing and go enjoy the good, green grass while autumn lasts.

Okay then, sorry about that.  I usually tend to take things as written/said, so I sometimes reply seriously to some satire.  It is the way I am, although if you make another similar comment, I will take it more as intended.

I'd hoped the eBay bit was a dead giveaway. I'll try to flag these clearly in the future.

In any case, Procipinee really is the weakest of the regulars.  I've played her faction many times, and the conditions in which it has a reasonable chance of winning are pretty slim.  She needs a large map, and a lucky distribution of shards.  Production inefficiency is just about the unkindliest cut of them all, since mana production in itself isn't worth much without all the buildings needed to increase mana--which in turn means she needs all the buildings to increase food from grain so her cities can grow to get the mana buildings.  I'd frankly like to see her put on a large map and that production malus changed to a production bonus, in order to see how she would fare.  It wouldn't do much good at all on a small or medium map, but I think she could really become a menace on a large one.  Of course, cranking her AI all the way so she gets bonuses would help, but it's less focused than what I'm after.

Sorry.  Rambling a bit.

I was focusing on the first paragraph, plus was a bit tired so I didn't reply to the whole post, sorry about that.   But I also noticed that there were other side's abilities that cost more points.  The satire was just a bonus.

In the first patch after release, Procipinee is going to get Weak trait instead of Inefficient, so that should help a bit (hopefully).  Only -1 Attack and -15 Carry Capacity is much better than 25% Production Malus (whether that be empire wide or the city she's in).