Lycenae

Ooops... sorry... should have re-read the patch notes before posting my last. My bad.

Also, it looks like city size does not limit "spammable" buildings. I just built 6 studies in a level 3 city. Shouldn't I only be able to build 3?

Confirmed. Please fix.

Yeah, that made me laugh too. I used-to freak out when enemy empires would have power ratings far in excess of mine when I first contacted them. Then, I discovered archers. Also, Spell Blast is your friend... especially now that hit points have been nerfed. You will never fear a stack when you have that spell.

Instances? Tiers? You must be playing world of elementalcraft. :-)

The whole specialist cost-scaling thing getting removed is *really* good news. It really hurt the game. As for the balance between cities and hamlets, it seems that is dictated by the layout of the map and where the resource nodes are. No one big city can control all needed resources, and it seems that there is value to having lots of little hamlets crunching out archers and other low cost units when at war. So, I say leave the balance the way it is. It seems to work. If you wanted to m

My last game was on normal and I saw similar population usage numbers. Is the population usage scaling metric something that can be disabled via XML?

"Diminishing returns" are already built into the system as part of the cost to traverse the tech tree. There's no need to add a new mechanic to limit research. People spam Studies because they're efficient. You can stop the spam either by making them less efficient with wonky formulas (less desirable because it is easy to be obscure and buggy), or more tightly limiting the number of building slots available to spam (more desirable because it's obvious what's going on). Anyway, that's how I s

Honestly, "population points" and "building slots" are pretty much equivalent in my mind. I'm fine with either metric... so I'm not going to argue the point. What I object to is this new "behind the scenes" scaling mechanic that actively penalizes me for doing what I should be doing: adapting to the map. Further, I don't get to know if I'm hosed until *after* I've added the building to the queue, and the act of doing so is irrev

I have to say that this game is a far sight better now than it was at launch. It is actually engaging and has that "one more turn" quality. That said, there are a few things I'm not sure I like. (1) The new specialist scaling system. This is definitely not fun. In several games now, I've tried to build a bank of studies to compensate for a lack of lost libraries in my vicinity. At some point, wham. The specialist cost jams up to something totally unreasonable and I can't back-out of the

Good news! After putting down the game for a while, I've fired it up again to try out v1.1, and I've found it to be far more *fun* than it used-to be. Definitely diggin' it. This game has changed alot since beta, and I really like the direction its taking. Happy new year, and keep it up!

I have pretty much given up on this game, for now, for many of the reasons mentioned in the OP. It needs several expansion packs worth of content before the game even begins to be interesting. That, and the core mechanics need to be somewhat less simplistic in order to introduce the needed unit variety. Can the game ultimately "get there"? I believe so. Stardock has a track record of sticking with their games. But, I just find the game "as it is" a trifle boring. There are better games to

This is actually a great use of thread necro. Just goes to show what happens when developers are allowed to vaingloriously boast on the forums.

I liked the way that retreating was handled in MoM... Or at least didn't mind it that much. It allowed me to dump out of a hopeless combat with one click, rather than have to waste time navigating to "the exit". And, in my mind, there *should* be a way for a superior opponent to chase you down, slowly attriting you. As for individual balance issues on the harder levels, it was a given that only certain spell strategies and unit combos were viable. Even the giant MoM strategy guide admitted

MoM handled the randomness in spell knowledge by allowing an initial number of spells to be known per school equal to the number of spell books known in the school minus one. So, if you had a set of spells that you liked to start the game with, you just picked the right number of spell books to get the favored spells as an "initial pick". Also, you could skip spell levels up to a point during research. When you were selecting the next spell to research, you were given an assortment of 6 l

Given that the magic system is slated to be revamped somewhat soon (yay!), here is my take on what I'd like to see happen to the magic system in v1.1 and after. Since Brad has already partially addressed the "Global Mana Pool" issue (sounds excellent, BTW), I'll leave that to the side and talk about the part of the E:WoM magic system that is getting somewhat less attention: variety. I'm worried that if people expect that simply adding more spells will "make things much bet

[quote]Before 1.08, the map was completely covered in monsters making it hard to even move. Now, the pendulum has swung to the other side and you can barely find anything. I think they nerfed monster spawns a bit too much.[/quote] Exactly. Without even reasonably tough challenges on the board and a sense of danger when sending out that first pioneer, the game has lost quite a bit. You no longer have to be on your toes early on. In v1.0.7 (an

Just sayin.

Definitely. Teleport should cost 5 plus 1 or 2 per extra unit. Also, you should have to research the spell along with raise and lower land.

Finally, if essence is no longer determining the size of the mana pool, then wisdom could perhaps serve as the limiting number of mana points that your sovereign could channel in a turn. If a big summoning spell cost 50 points and your sov had a wisdom of 10, it would take 5 turns to cast the summon.

One other thing: there should be goody huts available that provide mana points to the pool early on, much in the same way that you can find gilder. This accelerated the game a bit in MoM because it could be a struggle building a decent size mana pool before you had an army strong enough to take a few nodes. MoM also had alchemy which allowed you to transmute gold to mana crystals and back at a certain exchange ratio in a pinch. Maybe if you had a crystal mine, you could do the same thing, ma

Frogboy: yes... "casterless" overland spells cast directly on the map is precisely the right direction to go. I'm really looking forward to 1.1.

Absolutely agree that shards should give more than +1. At least +2 or +3. And, there should be faction buildings that give +1 to +2. A nice mechanic that one could steal from MoM: let the player switch arcane power points between research and mana regen. I always liked that mechanic.

True. And just doing what you suggested would add quite a bit to the game, especially if the other side gets a %defense and damage mitigated rating. There's quite a lot of potential variety there just in those factors. I seem to remember that MoM made attack and defense simultaneous as well. While this allowed units to kill each other, it did not have a "one shotting" problem. Overall, I was using the term "1DN" as a catch-all word for

Hm. Yeah... you're right about MoM. My recollection was faulty. That said, the MoM system is still effectively a *separate* hit% and damage system. So, I'm not sure that my point is made moot. I would guess there is still more going on "behind the scenes" of a MoM combat than there is in an E:WoM combat. I agree about your point about combat being a contest between units to see which one ends movement next to each other first so that it could