Turn 270 - FP 167. Magnar highest at 515, lowest is Gilden at 141. Ithuane has survived to build up defenses. Created a wall via manual placement of city improvements. Have a nightwatch built and hideout, thus monsters will not attack the city and if they do, have 6 archers and 4 spearmen defenders plus the 9 units in town. Hope is now level 4, new hallas is level 3. Northern border secure, southern border fortified. The peace within Tarth's small kingdom is contrasted with the absolutely insanity in the wide world. Experienced the random event that spawned monster spiders (yay, Sean!). However, none spawned inside Tarth's kingdom. Next 10 turns may focus on fortifying the outposts surrounding Ithuane and attempt to begin expansion westwards towards next settlement spot. Save.

Kingdom Report:

Lay of the Land:

Ithuane:

Sean - take a look at this save. Move a unit out of New Hallas... the game bugs out, apparently because I have too many city defenders... it moves out all the city defenders and stuff, crazy. This might be a game breaker - New Hallas is starting to crank out troops and if I can't move them out or have mobility due to the bug...

Friggin' Magnar is spamming the health debuff so the city is hurtin'. That spell alone could spell doom outside the bug here.

I'll take a look.

The save doesn't have any city defenders when I load it. So I can't reproduce it. But in my experience that Quendar unit is going to trounce New Hallas anyways. Problem solved.

I am not sure why, but I have seen some similar cases as you describe during the beta. Have you tried to fix it by changing the situation? Demolish some city defender improvements. Use the exit button on a unit to get out of the city. Leave the units at 9 in the city and let the newly trained units start outside the city. Use the settings option where units start outside the city by default. This might at least help you get around the bug. But it's one of those things I can't do much about. The problem is with having too many units in the city. I don't think it has much to do with the number of defenders, since I have gotten the same bug with only 3 of them.

Interesting. I'll play around with it tonight and let you know.

Reviewed turn 265 save and some others around there. Interesting fact is all city defenders are gone from New Hallas even though they were there when I originally saved. I went back and looked at turn 150 - appropriate # of city defenders there.

So in short, something occurred around turn 275 (I finished building an armorer) and then all of a sudden all city defenders gone... however, going back and reloading a turn 265 savegame loads New Hallas with 0 city defenders even though I know for a fact they were all there when I originally saved on 265.

Went ahead and demolished all city improvements at turn 265. Ended turn to see what would happen, none came back.

Very odd. Regardless, will call this playthrough since I can't fix the city defenders.     Oh well, time to start another game.

Very interesting read. Is it actually FUN to play a game like this?

Certainly not most of the time, but I've found it fun to give it a try. Almost every single mob on the map is an epic killer - trying to control and push them away has been fun. So much on the line - very unforgiving.

Yes, thanks for this read, Al.  I actually find battling the world more fun than the not-so-bright AI, so your slogging war of attrition against the Wild kind of fits my attitude towards the game.  

You should give it a go on my custom map with normal settings. The Hp ratios you are dealing with seem to hamper the game. I am outright deleting all Hp bonuses from the damn game. They are screwing up all my painstaking balance and pacing.

Sean - where can I get your map? It's probably right under my nose somewhere...

http://www.mediafire.com/?icapjiwcn35o9ao