CogBurn

[quote who="GFireflyE" reply="134" id="3242533"] @CogBurn: Simple solution here would be for the sovereign and other heroes require an upkeep such that you required cities to maintain them. The higher the level of champ, the better the city(s) you need to support them. [/quote] The problem with this idea is it only forces me to maintain a city, not to produce troops. I can still steamroll the world with 1 unit, my invinci-sov. That is the problem. Unkillable, neigh invulnrab

I think higher base unrest would help balance things a lot. More impetus to build unrest reducing structures, and more compelling reasons to cast the unrest reducing enchantments. It's far too easy to hit unrest 0 right now, where I think it should be fairly rare and perhaps impossible for some cities under 'normal' tax conditions.

You would have to assume so, but I have a huge distaste for the mindset of "we'll release it and balance/fix it after". The game should be balanced and polished upon release and patches should be for content.

[quote who="seanw3" reply="36" id="3242394"]"It's crunch time for balancing troops and heroes. We are in the home stretch of perfecting city usefulness and the magic system." -Amphibious-American All of this is done with an ear towards the community, their heated debates and wanton outcries. Probably even gonna listen to people who take things out of context and overreact to terms that they don't fully understand.[/quote] Ok, I'll eat my humble pie there, thanks

It's kinda bugging me that terms like "crunch time" and "home stretch" are being tossed about when issues like champ/troop balance, city usefulness, and the magic system are still receiving a lot of heated debate and community outcry.

I don't *really* care about heroes being able to obliterate a large chunk of the game content, I care that they can do it while equipping themselves completely off drops from goodie huts & lairs, and with zero need for troop support because no game mechanic legitimately threatens them after a certain point. As long as you are cautious in the early game and pick & choose your fights, you get to the point where no game mechanic or unit is a threat or cannot be dealt wi

[quote who="taltamir" reply="125" id="3242235"]I still PLAY the city game... its just that by the time I won the game with my sov the best unit I can field is a horse riding spearmen wearing leather armor. Aka, useless. So I never actually field any units. I do recruit champions though so that I can cast steal spirit on them... om nom nom delicious souls. If you scaled XP wsy down I will still play both games, the sov might be useless now or they might both be useful, bu

I don't believe the solution lies in striking a perfect balance where heroes gain "enough" xp that they can just precisely defeat some of the content while needing some troops from the cities to help them defeat the rest. There are vastly too many variables in the game to even attempt this, and it is flatly not worth while to even waste time on it. Which perks you take during sov creation, how many shards you get, how fast your research is, the monster density you play on

[quote who="cardinaldirection" reply="112" id="3241839"]I guess I find it hard to believe that your strategy wouldn't change if champions weren't permanent. It would definitely make them more a part of the strategy game, and less the focus of the entire game.[/quote] I don't think you understand. I don't even recruit the first champion. I kill every monster, wildland and opposing faction in the game with just m

[quote who="cardinaldirection" reply="110" id="3241808"]The notion of losing a prized champion doesn't compel you to protect it with support troops, which can only be produced by a city? I must assume that you don't play with the Spell of Making? We agree that there needs to be more of an incentive to play the strategy game, it is actually quite fun. The problem is that there is nothing deterring the player from focusing solely on the rpg,

In the city building list, the Merchant says " Provides: +2 Gildar per Season ", while the Market says " Provides: Gildar Per Season +4 " Consistancy plz. :D

[quote who="cardinaldirection" reply="107" id="3241614"]If they could be lost like cities, towns and armies would be constructed to support their endeavours.[/quote] Only if there are things in the world that are a legitimate threat to the champions that can only be dealt with via support from troops provided by a city. Just "your champions can perma-die" isn't going to compel everyone to build cit

[quote who="cardinaldirection" reply="106" id="3241603"]Four wounds equals death, creating a goodie-hut on the tile where the champion fell full of their equipment (and potentially fertile ground proportionate to their power?). Healing an injury should naturally extend a champion's life; lives which would become much more commonly protected and accompanied by support squads. Imagine how much less daring (yet no less powerful) that second champion would be after their first inj

The part that gets me is their very selective seeming blindness to AI cities/outposts/resource nodes. I've popped that shadow rift spell down adjacent to an AI city before and every single monster it spawned ran directly away from the town.

Maybe introduce a line of improvements that champions must visit in order to actually spend their accumulated XP and gain their levels. The thing is, that is still not compelling me to train units, only forcing me to build a city to unlock the win-buttons for my god-sov. I don't need troops, when my sov is perfectly capable of demolishing the world single handedly. There needs to be some enemies out there that are a legitimate threat to your soverign but that your t

The problem that still has not been addressed in a real definitive fashion is that champions still snowball to the point where they steamroll the game. Cities do not provide a single thing that is absolutely vital to conquering the world other than a recovery-haven in the case of accidental death. Still. This is the problem that we had before these balance changes, and it is the problem we still have. In my current game of the current build, my cities have not produced a single thing

[quote who="Trojasmic" reply="52" id="3241283"]Quoting StillSingle, reply 51I just wonder if because Frogboy would be testing the monster behaviour with the Ctrl+U command to remove the fog of war, whether that is hiding a problem that we see because we (generally) play with FOW on. Yep...been saying that all along.[/quote] I know this has been a problem in the past, Brad, I wonder if it's still tainting your testing.

[quote who="tesb" reply="23" id="3238505"]still quite a way to go with the betas to be honest: Border drawings has a lot of bugs especially if you loose cities Heroes might have a slightly more difficult starting, but you can still play without the 4x completely (i am playing a game at the moment where i just run around with my sovereign and my empire does nothing to contribute, i.e. no items bought and no combat units trained) mon

[quote who="NorsemanViking" reply="39" id="3236996"]Now this will change. I'm sure all will see this in a clearer view when we play the next beta version.[/quote] The question is if it will change enough . In MoM, a level 1 hero pretty much can't kill anything at all. He is babysat by your troops until he is high enough level to babysit them back as he kills the powerful single monsters like dragons. I'd like to see that mechanic return. Stop throwing singl

I think making cities require that a given terrain square be fully filled (all four small improvement squares) before new improvements can be built off it in any direction would help contain the snaking issue to a good extent. You would still be able to stretch your city a couple squares to reach a river/forest, but you wouldn't be able to make ridiculous 10+ tile stretches. And whoever said that snaking "ruins immersion"? That is bunk. Having my city utterly

Currently equipment ramps up too fast and tops out too high, and there are no enemies that specialize in slaying champions thus requiring masses of troops to help with. Anything troops can do, champions can do better, given enough equipment and some levels. Some effort needs to be made to bring the extreme low and high ends of weapons and armor a bit closer together.

Again, I didn't kite. I auto-resolved all but perhaps 5 or 6 combats.

[quote who="cardinaldirection" reply="31" id="3236698"]Quoting CogBurn, reply 28 Brad, there needs to be dangers and challenges in the world that your soverign cannot handle without something that only the cities can provide. The game NEEDS them, desperately. You can tweak unit balance all you want, but until cities are just flatly indespensable and intrinsic to surviving and progressing in the world, you simply don't NEED them. I believe the ba

How timely :)

There just needs to be a reason to use something your cities provide to conquer the opponents and/or the world. As it stands, all the cities do is provide you with things that you can use to make more cities. Your sov is capable of generating everything he needs to do the conquering all on his own. He is a fully self contained, self sufficient wrecking ball. Your cities generate research to research buildings that allow them to generate more research. It makes me think of some sort of