Lets balance the game ourselves! (for ideas and testing results)

I too have increased the maximum yield from 9 to 10 with impressive results. In addition, I've increased the minimum yield from 6 to 7 with the thought that the AI would stop settling on brutal 6 yield locations. However, I've found that the AI is now settling on non-yield locations more often, so I am surmising that the AI does not follow the same rules when it comes to settling. They see dead people tiles. 

I agree that friendship with an AI should be worked for and earned. Making it more difficult to attain could be one method to achieving this. I would really like to see a greater division between kingdoms and empires when it comes to diplomacy. Hopefully, we'll see many improvements to this end in the 1.4 patch.

I think this should be approached to varying degrees. More elements of this game require discrete adjustments to properly reflect the dificultly level you have chosen. AI unit training is one of those areas. The harder the dificultly, the cheaper AI units are to produce. Same for research. Same for Income. Same for unrest. Same for experiance.

I disagree here. Scarce resources breed competition and uniqueness. It forces you to adapt. I love having to fight over a city to obtain something rare or important. I love it even more when they put up a good fight. Obviously the AI has to be able to do the same....which I don't think it currently does all that well...which means that certain AI under certain starting conditions just flounders.

Agree. AI need horse units. I do enjoy the scarcity though. Only having enough horses to service a % of your forces is important as it forces you to adapt and spread your better/stronger units around.

I don't mind the current release of specialized and rare equipment. I find the gap to be in the shops. I'd love it if the purchase prices were reduced across the board. Currently it is impossible to even equip your heroes with mundane items because they just cost too much to purchase.

Uh I don't just invade the AI with single army of death, it can be disrupted by spells via strategy mode. Instead, I invade with multiple armies all the time if I can.

It depends on your strategy, but I find one mounted Stack of Doom with +1 movement is a much more efficient use of resources than lots of small stacks. You can avoid strategic spells by only entering enemy territory if you can take the Outpost/ City in the same turn, which with movement 5 is normally possible. In the cases where it isn't possible then attacking with small stacks until the AI runs out of mana/ spells (and you can use your megastack) is a possible tactic.

N/A

One does not simply avoid Curgen's Volcano, Tornado, Starfall and more.

If you was to invade me And I have appropriate heroes with appropriate spells ready to go.

I'll have Starfall, Tornado, Volcano, Lower land, Raise land, Tremor, tidal wave, freeze, and some more ready to and nuke armies.

And I don't make small stacks, I go ahead and make full sized armies and prepare myself for magical nukage.

But so far, I have never ran into an runaway AI that strong.

Volcano, raise land, lower land can cut off invasion routes and force enemy armies to reroute and buy you more turns.

Tornado, freeze, tremor, tidal wave etc for delaying

Then Starfall for outright murder.

And stuff like pillar of fire an kill whole armies if you have enough fire channelers to spam it in a single turn.

There is another help for "stupid AI" who doesn't know what to do with horses. I tested addition of +1 to move to everybody and AI is now quick even without horses. So all races' basic speed was made 3 (Mancers have 4). Now everybody moves through forest for 2 squares and it feels that the game is more dynamic now. At the same time Mancers don't have a great bonus, since they also move through forests at 2. Units are faster and now archers don't rule the game. Melee happens very quickly.

If a 6 men unit requires 120 metal then a single pile of iron doesn't matter. On the other hand - you are right! Units should be MUCH cheaper  so that few metal from single iron ore should matter.

It is much more rewarding to find something may be not so great but unique from some locations or from heroes. In all my games I make collections of special items which can not be bought. In this aspect I also hate henchmen because only they can supply heroes with good armor. But it is not unique... This is not ... worth for true Heroes.

Yes this is a good way but it needs calculation. Especially if I make units cheaper. Arcane armor disbalances these figures because it requires crystals but not metal. AI should equip elite troops with amulets which give +2 to fire and cold attack ... etc. I think that Arcane armor should be modded to require metal instead of crystal.

Or I tend think to make a special ability for AI that reduces all armor costs by some %%%.

Yes! Right! That's why I gave 3 moves to everybody. Everybody are like old-good-Mancers now. And Mancers with 4 moves don't have geat advantage, because 4 vs. 3 is not so significant like 3 vs 2, especially in forests.

This can be solved in CoreUnits file by making additional units with wargs and horses for all races. Just a copy/paste work. Btw, seems that wargs need a little enchancement. I gave them +2 Attack and +1 move for the first battle turn so that on the first turn horses and wargs are equal but later on wargs are better for their initiative. That explains their higher cost. Otherwise wargs are weak with few bonuses.

I like more Clay pits and Wild grain and others which don't give materials, but give bonuses to cities. I like highly developed prospering cities.

1. There is another feature which I like in my recent tests. It greatly helps AI. I made training yards, barracks and command post available for all types of cities. So AI, who trains units anywhere, trains decent units. I left War academy for Fortress though to hold the final bonus and all forges and armorers are also kept for fortresses only.

2. I also look to add feature to every unit to give -1 (or -2?) unrest to a city where it is garrisoned. So player will be interested in making garrisons.

3. I also played with some abilities and made them available for Male or Female only. So some units now are preferable for male (melee) and some for female (mages and archers). I also made available weaknesses for unit constructor so it may be fun to make cheap units for garrisons. Imagine former veterans with broken legs or with other injuries guarding my cities. ))) Just for fun - AI seems doesn't use these weaknesses.

I would appreciate any critics for these ideas as well as providing any new fun and useful ideas for modding.

Well, sure, but in practice the AI doesn't do this. I've seen it immobilize and obliterate stacks which are in its borders, but not outside. Perhaps it could be more aggressive with its strategic spells outside its borders, especially if it has lots of mana, but it doesn't do that at the moment. If it has limited mana it becomes quite a hard problem to solve in any case, because it's not immediately obvious whether casting an expensive strategic spell is necessarily the best thing to do with its mana. It's only really a good strategy if the AI can eliminate units in the stack, either through sheer number of strategic spells or because it's about to attack the stack with its armies. Otherwise the AI might spent 200 mana to attack a stack which can simply retreat to heal and then come back in a few turns; the AI probably doesn't have 200 mana to burn every few turns. Enemy stacks which are inside your borders are clearly more of a threat, targeting stacks outside your borders is more likely to be a waste of mana; they might not even be targeting you, and it's much easier for them to retreat to heal after being weakened.

Also don't forget Fog of War; movement five is beyond normal Fog of War, and you can't cast a strategic spell on something that you don't know is there.

@webusver

What I said:

What you said:

Never did I say that units should be much cheaper so that you need less metal. Quite the opposite. I've been reducing the metal in my games in an effort to balance the blatent excess of resources that currently exists. If you have only enough metal build 2 6-man units (costing 120 metal each), then I recommend the next unit you build to require only crystal....or no resource at all...or design a unit that requires less metal so that you can create more units with the same amount of available metal. Munchkin troops isn't the be all end all of this game. Adapting to the circumstances given you is.

Wishlist:

- Different AI behaviour. It does not feel different, it's either dominating or dominated. More alliances, more dog piling aggressors etc.

- Better AI heroes. They had stuff like Sarog's axe etc. before, why was that removed? Make the Sovereign AI's damn strong and a challenge.

- More diversity in troops. I will probably mod this eventually, but would be nice to see something else than Damage/Defense/HP/Initiative focus for everything. 

2/3 is AI related. AI needs to be improved before it's necessary to balance anything. 

If you have access to powerful spells as I listed. 

You also have access to ineluctable vision.

Fog of war goes bye bye and FE:LH wars become apocalyptic.

Yes, you didn't. But you said:

If units are cheap, then every mine becomes more important because it can help more and quicker. Unfortunately factor of rarity works against poor AI because human player needs just one mega-epic army (which may require practically no metal or crystals in some strategies) and AI needs lots of cannon fodder. And rarity can't help cannon fodders. So there are two ways: to make units cheaper (this makes objections from human players) or to add "only-AI" unit traits which greatly reduce cost of armor for AI (this looks like cheat and requires special difficulty level below which there will be no such possibility).

What is better?

1. Different behaviour? I dream of at least any reasonable behaviour. AI will never be as human player. Multiplayer is needed for this. For Ai imho it's just enough if he is aggressive even if dominated.

2. It's possible to mod value of all traits so that hopefully AI will develop its heroes better. AI will also benefit if all heroes were just better equipped from start.

3. I made some traits available only for male troops, some only for female. So muscular athletic males are good for melee and quick critical hitters females are good for ranged attackers. Now I also test changes to classes so that all of them should be fun to play, not only warrior or perhaps mage and assasin sometimes. I slightly lowered warrior's damage rate, gave +1 Attack to armies of Commander, gave some strength bonus to defender and made most traits more available. New trait-trees are more expandable and there are more branches to choose. And I try to teach AI do choose "proper" traits.

I disagree. Mines are only valuable up to the point that my metal income matches the demand for my desired production rate, and if units get cheaper I don't need as many mines. Once you have the minimum required number of mines to meet your desired production rate, you don't need any more mines, so the only value mines beyond that target number have is as insurance against mine destruction, or expansion room if you decide to increase your overall training rate. But if you think about it, once you have your main armies up, your desired troop training rate tends towards zero, as you only need to replace the occasional loss, or potentially add a new army if you decide to expand your military. At that point, though, you'll probably have stored up enough metal that the income doesn't matter in the short-term, because you've gone for X turns without actually using much of your metal income because you haven't needed more troops.

If Iron Deposits, Crystal Crags, etc gave you a fixed amount of the associated resource (e.g. building a Stables on Wild Horses gives you 20 horses, the same way a Fire Shard gives you one Fire Mana), and units required X amount of resource Y for training and then reduced your total available amount of resource Y by X until the unit is destroyed or disbanded, then there could be an argument for every resource site being valuable. As a source of income that accumulates over time, though, all you need is to match your resource income to your resource consumption, and anything beyond that income rate isn't worth much to you. Resource sites are only valuable as long as gaining them brings you closer to matching your resource income to your desired resource consumption, and if your desired resource consumption is decreased (for instance, by making units cost less resources), the value of each mine is decreased because you don't need as many of them. If every faction needs 10 metal income per turn to meet its metal demand and there's only 10 potential metal income on the map, metal sites are extremely valuable. On the other hand, if the map has 10 potential metal income and the global metal demand doesn't exceed 10, then as long as each faction that wants metal has enough sources to meet its individual demand there isn't any reason to fight over the metal sites, unless someone wants to monopolize the metal to gain an advantage of whatever kind - trade, better weapons and armor, the Spell of Making Tower that requires metal for its construction, etc. If there's 10 global demand and the map offers 100 production, then more than likely everyone will be swimming in so much metal that no one will care about the mines, because there's just so much more than is needed that there isn't any real reason to even develop all of the mines.

I agree with Joe, less resources is better. I would like clubs to be cheap units, and armored swordsmen beating 3+ of those units at least. Iron especially is too abundant.

This is a great idea actually. Mod it?

If you want to do so, you can - I'm certainly not going to stop you. I myself probably won't.

Is it possible to add features from War of Magic that would make the game more interesting?  Such things as dynasties?

To a limited extent, yes, it is possible to bring dynasties back into the game. There have been a couple of threads on the subject, including this one:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/448640/page/1/

You can try digging around in the modding forums, or asking there, to see if anyone has a dynasty mod, or you can go into ElementalDefs.XML and change <EnableDynasties>0</EnableDynasties> to <EnableDynasties>1</EnableDynasties> to see how much of the E:WoM dynasty stuff is still in the game.

Also, which "other features from War of Magic" are you referring to, aside from dynasties? Your question is a little too vague to easily answer, otherwise, though most of the old E:WoM character attributes are still defined in the XML, and some of the traits currently have multiple versions defined so theoretically some of those could be from E:WoM. Still, this might better be answered as a question thread in the modding forum or as a question in the Modding Questions Thread (https://forums.elementalgame.com/445226/page/1).

Thank you for feedback. I have almost finished my mod which improves AI as much as possible and will upload it in a week or so.

I made all starting points provide good tiles. Hero classes are rebalanced to make them all equally useful. For example, Commander can boost Attack for all his army. Defender can earlier learn abilities that defend his army. And so on. Garrisons reduce unrest. AI is more agressive and better choses his targets for war. AI makes more armies and equips them better. AI likes mounted troops. AI is "genious" is city deployment and management... No, AI is still stupid and choses suboptimal decisions, but now it has my help and can potentially prosper to 5 level cities even if he satrs on a tile with 1 grain.

I hope to finish in a week and it will be a beta version. I will need your help in testing and suggesting interesting ideas.

Make the commanders not have that stupid - unrest in city this unit is in penalty and change them to -2 -3 -4 unrest to all cities for the 3 traits.

Should be easy to mod that and it's pretty sad when the game rewards you for keeping your heroes home.

Yes I also hate this. It harms AI, because AI may only occasionally use this trait. I'm going to change Administrator trait to give small global effect, like trait Noble. In its turn trait Noble is also strengthened - it gives +1 growth in every city. People should really like their noble sovereign, as well as players, I hope   I also rebalanced trait Hunter. Earlier it was almost useless but now hunters supply cities with food, adding +50 food to every town. So towns may grow quicker and bigger. Sovereign Hunter also starts with his hunting dog. So there is a good reason to choose Hunter now.

You've got some great ideas.  I really like the hunting dog one!

You all like scarce resources just until you suffer heavy battle causalties. What will you say when your 200-metal, 100-crystal elites will die like chicken every battle? So, let it be - have scarce resources.

My phylosophy about cheats is simple: whether you cheat or no, you should have a hard time.

I just played a game where Yithril had 30 damage mace units with 45 defense while I was still stuck with leather armor.

I had much better technology, but I couldn't use it because I had no iron or crystals on my side of the map.

I had to take 2 ythril cities to be able to start getting any metals at all and that isn't easy when they have 9 defenders in each city.

I was able to win, but I have to say that it was unfair.  I am giving the AI all kinds of ridiculous production bonuses willingly, but not sucking up a complete lack of all useful materials willingly.

If no other resource is guaranteed to be evenly distributed around the map, at least metal should be.

If you're winning anyway, what's the problem? Some games you have lots of resources, some games you don't.

I just don't think the game should force me to stay in the stone age when it lets the AIs advance to the space age, or whatever.

Generally, I make my picks to try to limit how bad I could suffer from poor resource distribution.  I picked Great Hammers and I was using hammer units specifically to reduce iron dependence and that was a good call because I had no iron until I managed to get +2 iron per turn from one of my cities.

Whether I win or not really doesn't have that much to do with how unfair it feels to have the deck stacked against me like that.

I kinda think there should be some way built into the game that players can compensate for poor distribution of resources.

With mana you can do this sort of thing.  You can put Meditation on cities, and you can make Conclave buildings to give additional mana regardless if you don't have many shards near you.  I just think they need something similar for metal.  Something that comes into play before level 4 cities do.

Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to switch the +2 metal per turn city ability with the +1 hp/level and heals 10 hp per turn ability.  That would put the +2 metal per turn ability against +2 initiative and it would be a real sacrifice to take it.  It would also give some reason not to take Prison at level 4.