Elemental Forums
I'm playing as Kulan the Beastlord on Expert/Expert settings. Some claim the Beastlord profession is over-powered. Let's find out!
Good Morning
me again. 
If you don't mind, I go though my list of comments from your, as always, very interesting Let's Play.
1) For starters...you got yourself a 4/3/2 but I simply have got to ask. Where in the world of Elemental did that essence come from? Nothing nearby generates essence...
2) I see as your capital reached level 2 you had a difficult time determining which way to go. You couldn't explore or consider your other possible sites properly. Is the level up setting at population 50 too low? Do you need more time to consider what you're empire is going to take shape like?
3) As a side note, when you level up your cities and receive buildings, would you like the option of being able to place those buildings?
4) How's that tactical 'moving through allied units' working out for you? I'm finding it to be very cheesy...
5) Very intersting point about there not being enough Commander heroes available for the later Fame levels.
I'll update this post as I come accross more things...
This point kinda bugs me about the current iteration of the heroes system. I don't mind the playing the hand that is dealt to me mindset but it seems every game I get the heroes that I only want 1 or 2 of (defender, assassin, warrior) and never what I want (governers) I end up devouring my later heroes for spell traits instead of using them. My suggestion is have the heroes start with the abilities but leave the class choice to the player.
EPISODE 2: What's your favorite bug? I don't like bugs, but I do like spiders cuz they get all the icky bugs.
Hi Firefly,
1) yeah good question... pretty random eh?!
2) I'm actually pretty happy about the food requirements for leveling cities... with one exception. This game does not lend itself to small empires very well. They've tried to address that by penalizing you for having too many cities, but if I only wanted to build 1 city, it would still take me forever to get it to Level 5. There are two issues: My building queue would have to be constantly focused on grain/food buildings to the detriment of building anything else and my research queue would have to be constantly focused on grain/food techs to the detriment of researching anything else.
They probably should have stuck with the growth model where you have x number of new colonists per turn spread across the number of cities you have with the buildings and techs being modifiers to those values. For example, if you have 10 new guys every turn and you only have one city, it grows by 10 every turn. If you have 10 cities, then they each only grow by 1 every turn.
3) Not really... I like to manually place my buildings but I haven't missed not being able to manually place the upgrade buildings.
4) I like it! I haven't noticed any cheesiness.
5) I agree with the other poster... I understand the "play the hand your dealt" concept, but it would be nice to declare the class when you pick your hero. Maybe Derek would compromise and keep most of the Level 3+ heroes with classes, but throw in a few Level 3+ heroes without class. (That sounds funny).
wow. you are getting mighty lucky with all those excellent city locations.
I agree with your comment about Umber and Resoln in that their bonus creatures may be causing a fake power level to exist. Umber more than Resoln though as you can pick up some REALLY strong beasts right away and Resoln's young corrupteds are pretty pathetic.
I have an idea that may address the issue:
Suppose, if you successfully cast Tame on a beast, the experience that you would have received from that beast was also removed from the combat? Essentially, if you wanted to persue a beastlord strategy, you're sovereign would be leveling up a lot less because a lot less experience is coming his way. The beast is already a massive reward. A low level sovereign may be the perfect counter. Thoughts?
Something. I don't like getting leveled late game heroes either since I don't like the classes or skill/perk/spell/whatever choices. Give me a lvl X hero but let me distribute everything. Otherwise I like how heroes are accumulated now compared to earlier iterations.
lolz. I think everytime you have traded technology with another faction you have received 3 gildar back in the transaction. Wacky coincidence.
EPISODE 10: They've All Gone Mad in a Pit of Madness
What do you get when you cross an Umberdroth, 2 Ravenous Harridens, Great Wolf, and a Hergon? A very formidable army!
** NOTE: This is a good one for Stardock devs to watch to hear my request for a slight improvement to the Empire Tree at 9:18.
Good Morning
Still watching.
More notes:
6) Thanks for mentioning my Economic Treaty thread. You are correct in that it would be really nice if the treaty were descibed in more detail, for starters so that players know precisely what the treaty does, and for finishers to determine whether or not the treaty is properly balanced and placed where it should be in the tech tree.
7) Excellent suggestion about the UI showing established treaties in the faction power window! 
8) Excellent suggestion about the UI showing the treasury breakdown when hovering over your income!
9) At one point you purchased a horse from another faction's ZoC. I've always thought this to be quite silly as you yourself don't have to focus on your own shop since you can just mooch off of others (the entire concept of shops is currently underwhelming imo). I have two ideas to address this: 1) The other faction's shop prices are dependant upon their diplomatic attitude towards you in combination with any active treaties you have with that faction. 2) A portion of your purchases goes towards that faction's coffers. I suppose it would even be possible to include bonuses in techs to increase the %return you receive on sales in your faction's shop. Thoughts?
10) I've noticed you mention several times that the AI isn't properly protecting its cities and should be aptly punished for it. As I write this, one of your cities is about to be smashed since you yourself are not protectly your cities. While I understand that if the monsters and AI were more aggressive to take advantage of undefended cities then I'm sure you would defend your cities....but as is you do not. Comments? How do you envision how all cities (player and AI alike) to be defended during the coarse of a game?
10a) Concerning cities that are conquered by monsters, do you like that they are instantly razed? Would you like to see them ravaged or turned into lairs instead; perhaps questing/tasking your faction to go deal with the problem before it becomes worse?
11) I've noticed that you have plenty access to Iron Ore but don't even bother collecting it. Is Iron Ore just not useful for anything (or any of the viable strategies?) Should Iron Ore be intergrated into more weapon and armor types in the magic tree as well as the armor tree? Should the levels of Iron Ore collected or the Rarity of the resource be adjusted to make it more meaningful?
12) In response to your notes on the Tremor Spell. Of the three turns the spell refers to, could the first turn be the turn that the spell is cast? (I know...redundantly dumb, but it's possible that's what it means). Comments? Any other spells or abilities that fall under the same 'shortness' or turns?
just about to start episode 10....more to come...
9 ) Shopping in another faction's ZoC: You nailed my thoughts exactly... 1 ) the prices should depend on your Diplomacy rating with the faction ( btw, I have a ton of thoughts on improving Diplomacy that we haven't even talked about yet 
) and 2 ) a portion of the purchases should go to the faction's coffers.
10 ) Defense of cities: I don't know that I have a good answer for this. I should probably do a better job of defending my cities. Here a couple of reasons that I don't.
a ) Laziness
b ) I'm an offensive player not a defensive player
c ) Having 2-3 trained units in every city is cost prohibitive... the trained unit wages are too high.
d) I use Tremor and Freeze a lot to control what happens near my cities. In this particular example, I was actually warned the turn before that monsters were in my territory, but I didn't see the warning. I think the event notification system is wonky. I don't like the event tree. Most of the stuff is just noise, but sometimes an important message pops up and you miss it. The event notification should start off with big window messages that take up the middle of the screen (like GalCiv) with the option to minimize all future messages of the same type. For example, I would leave the "Monsters in Your Territory" message as one to pop up in the middle of my screen every time. It would also be nice to have an Event History so you could go back and reread the stuff.
10a ) Insta-razing: I'm not a fan of insta-razing. I think it should take 5 turns to burn a city down. I like the idea that cities attacked by monsters and ruffians turn neutral.
11 ) Iron Ore: For me, it's different every game. You're seeing me play a game where I haven't needed any iron ore. Some games I play and I can't get enough. I think the balance is just about right. Sometimes you need it, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you have enough, sometimes you don't.
12 ) Tremor: I even did the little T-3 (turn cast), T-2 (next turn), T-1 (got attacked) just to show everybody it wasn't long enough. I've seen it work before, but it didn't in this particular instance so there must still be some underlying bug in the calculation.
EPISODE 13 PART 1: The Rag Tag 7 vs. Morian, the Ruin of Summer in an EPIC Battle
Good Morning
13) Beginning of epsiode 11 you are still wondering why you cannot make an alliance with Capitar. I think you need to be of 'close' relationship status in order to offer this treaty type. Would be nice if that was descibed in the treaty details.
14) You mentioned that the AI doesn't focus on building improvements that reduce unrest, like the Belltower. I mentioned the very same in the AI thread a short while back thinking that the AI is really being disadvantaged by high levels of unrest. However, you may be right in that the AI doesn't play by the same rules as the player when it comes to unrest penalty. Imo, should really be looked into cause AI should play by the same rules.
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