RemingtonRyder

I only hold onto cities if the position is defensible. In other words, can I build improvements (snake) to stop them from just running past the city? It is true that the AI will build lots of cities if they have plenty of space, but they're not always optimal. A fortress city with only 2 Material? I may take advantage of fortifications (once they're up) but that's it. The downside of holding onto cities that are far from home is that it takes time

Yeah um those 'unresearchable' techs are repeatable . You keep researching them, you increase the associated bonus. Awesome, is it not?

See the thing you should consider is that when you buy a game from Stardock there's post-release support. Okay so it may take a while for the mega ultra patch to arrive but they're good for it.

Something that has always irked me is that there isn't a 'How about you switch sides and help me fight X instead?' option in diplomacy. You have to first sign a peace treaty and then bribe them to go to war. It would open up AI trait possibilities like Loyal (tends not to betray an ally) or Backstabber (tends to jump at the chance to betray an ally).

The only reason why they're sending pioneers in to begin with is because they're trying to claim any resources that aren't taken or settle sites that don't have cities yet. If you spam pioneers onto your own land you can make their pioneer rushing futile and they will stop. The downside (there always is one) is that if any monsters that have their lairs near to those resources suddenly find themselves homeless, they will start wandering around.

I think this may be what you're looking for. Just create your sovereign, exit out of the game, open up their file in the Units folder and enter the desired backstory/lorebook text.

The debuff of Spell Resist does wear off fairly quickly, depending of course on how quickly the other player gets their turns (I think). Typically when I do play Empire, I need to get my debuff or damage spell in there next turn or the Shadowbolt is wasted.

[quote who="Borg999" reply="9" id="3291112"]What effect do these have? + Moved AIEvaluateAreaThreat to AIfaction + AI trait weighting reduced from 1000 to 100 for researching techs purposes + Modified Average combat rating to be 100 instead of 200 in elementaldefs.xml Also, has the AI insta-build on reload bug been fixed?[/quote] The first point may relate to this one: [quote who="FrogBoy"]+ AI pioneers better about staying put if th

[quote who="Glazunov1" reply="6" id="3291047"] + AI interacts more with players What does this mean? Better diplomacy AI, or just more of it? Or something else, and if so, what?[/quote] It means it's better at making long-winded speeches. You'll finally get to say 'Have some light balls.' ;)

Consulate upgrade for outposts gives the +1 growth.

There isn't a lot of incentive to be diplomatic unless you want to set up caravans, there is a lot to be said for going it alone and not helping the AI players by giving them something. It's a lot easier to be aggressive and unfriendly to them than it is to be nice.

The idea of shadowbolt is to do some damage and set up an enemy for a whole world of hurt if they have some spell resistance. It can only be used every other turn, which limits its usefulness, I'd say that it's a fair trade-off considering that the Death magic doesn't give you any way to heal your troops, Heal being a Life spell with no cooldown and there being no way to stop it apart from the usual 'shoot the healer first' method. Wildling Shamans typi

I actually disagree about the tactical combat. It's reminiscent of MOO2 tactical combat, although in a typical one champion plus contingent army there aren't very many special abilities flying around. I really need to have my champions join up for some battles, even if it does mean the XP income is less, because multi-champion fights are fun. And totally unbalanced. ;) What I like about it is that not every battle is a simple 'Charge till you see the whit

[quote who="Jim Winsor" reply="6" id="3290346"]Does it work on garrison militia/archers? Never tried, but have wondered ...[/quote] Yep, but you don't get to have them stick around afterwards they just... spontaneously bite it after the fight. Which you can sort of understand. They're not supposed to be around except for city defence.

Not every location is suitable for settlement. You'll get the most benefit by casting it in swamps or those dead-looking forests, I think. But yeah to answer your question, if you don't see any grain/material/essence yield info after casting, it's not a good spot.

There's nothing to say you can't mod in a stave that increases in damage as the unit levels. Might not work, but you can try it. ;)

I tend to see the AI push with pioneers to the opposite side of my territory one of two ways. If it's just one pioneer running around, I'll just rush my own pioneers and set up outposts so that they can't snag any resources on my side of the border. If they do manage to avoid being eaten by monsters, I can take back one outpost no problem. If it's two or three or more pioneers shamelessly gobbling up the resources and trying to build cities on the other s

I have the same problem with an install from SDC. As nice as the music is I just turn it off and play something in the background.

I can just imagine the expression on the face of my enemies when I have a company of fire mages all cast flame darts at the same time. I mean hey, they might only get to attack every other turn, but they'll just annihilate anything that isn't immune to fire.

Sometimes the cartography table can be a bit funny and not show you stuff that has been placed down on the map. It's still there, and you can check by opening the map file up in an XML editor. As for not seeing the map that you created, well so far as I know, if you have the usual random generation stuff turned on when loading a custom map then those things will still generate, which may overwrite parts of your map. You may want to set those things to None accordingly.

Interestingly, you can also use it on Syndicate Thugs, which means you can get some 'cannon fodder' units that don't ask for any wages (may be a bug).

Three dragons at the front of the army. Now that's overkill. [e digicons]XD[/e]

To be honest I'd rather pick the Guild Warehouse some of the time. Less time spent hunting for the town that's not doing anything, only to realise that it doesn't need to be doing anything... curses.

Mostly playing. I had a longer comment but the forum monster ate it. Maybe your post will be next. :P

When you consider how much damage they can actually inflict with those staves, I wouldn't say that they're novices, they're just most skilled at using magical staves.