Horemheb

EDIT: Wrong thread. Nothing to see here.

The game should be challenging on the harder levels, no question about that. However, having a dice-roll end your game is just stupid. And, too powerful to do anything monsters wandering randomly in the world are exactly like that. If the monsters are static, then there is no challenge at all in conquering the world. There needs to be challenges the player can choose to accept. The player needs to accept some challenges to succeed in the game long term. Resources and excellent city lo

I don't think the strength of the monsters is a problem. The real problem is that if a powerful monster happens to be located nearby your lands, you have no way to avoid getting killed by it. It is pure luck if it decides to attack you or not. In my opinion, the monsters could be even more powerful than they are now. They should give better rewards if killed. But if you don't attack them, then they will leave you alone. If you want to conquer the chaotic world, then you will n

I don't know why the "kick out" is there to begin with. Is there some situation where you _do_ want to let your enemy wander in your territory, but don't want to make a pact with him. This seems like a user should install a script: "if enemy unit spotted, then always kick him out" (if the AI is willing to listen). These automates are just taking away from the game. Dull repetitive clicking without thinking does not a fun game make.

This beta is once again better. I have played one full game, and one half game. Feedback on changes in this beta: A regression in how monsters guard their loot: they sometimes wander off their loot if you move next to them. This lets you steal loot. I don't find this mechanic fun at all. The TacAI which moves badly wounded units back is a lot of fun. However, the AI still moves low defense - fast movement units in first, which can cause 1 vs many situation

I do agree the rushing mechanic should be changed. A small change making this a lot smaller issue is to allow last turn's unused production to go to the next item in the list. To me it seems the AI is currently left behind in the early game. If it manages to get to middle & late stages of the game, then it will play OK. But, usually at that stage it is already left behind and there is no real fight. My "rules for winning": Never build pioneers if there i

Yes, you can rush-build the three turn limited buildings, pretty sure that is a bug. Rushing buildings that take more than three turns is beneficial, too. The last turn's part is usually just a few production points, and thus is inexpensive to rush. You get your building one turn earlier AND get to construct the city's full production point amount for the next building. Thus it is almost always worth it to buy the last turn's portion away.

I wonder what kind of tax levels the AI used? Maybe the AI is building military units too early in the game? In the early game you don't have enough population to support any kind of an army, and in addition to that the early militia isn't that useful. I would suggest that if building a military unit results in higher unrest in major cities, then the AI should not do it. Another thing: rush build when there is single turn left! This can reduce build times by more than 10% whil

My opinion is that good city places should be guarded. You need to build an army to expand.

I, too, am having a lot of fun with the game. Nearly 20h playtime clocked. The game is fun to play! But, there are also some problems. No. 1 is that the AI doesn't seem to be that challenging on challenging. I believe major part of the problem is that I am able to play with no taxes, but the AI seems to be building too many units, and because of that it seems to need high tax rate and that leads to slow research and production. This seems to be at worst in the early game, the AI s

The tactic of attacking resources and outposts is sure annoying. You can't defend them all with stationary troops, or you will be spread too thin. If you try to defend them with moving stacks, you will not get there before the resource is already destroyed. Now, the tactic is somewhat effective, but rebuilding destroyed resources isn't that hard. The real problem is that on a larger map this style of game play is boring. You will constantly need to check for enemies, you will

I played another game... And groups + basic weapons technology is the key to win. Get those, produce best units you can, and you will most likely win. There are a couple of items causing this (squads below mean any 3+ figure unit). Squads do a lot of damage with advanced weapons. The damage scales too much with weapon technology. Armor (even full leather armor plus shields) stops a lot of damage. It seems that if the AI units were armored up this could mitigate the fi

(Partial repost from another thread) I think there are multiple nice changes in 0.913. Much funnier to play! Currently the biggest issue seems to be that once you get some basic weapons technology and squads, then building a couple of units and casting buffs on them will create such a killer stack that it is able to beat almost anything on the map. Maybe the units scale up a bit too much on level-up, and maybe the steps between technologies needs to be just a little bit smaller. Havin

Maybe the monster whose territory is threatened would just need to destroy the outpost/city which caused the pressure on its land, and when its land is again uncontested then return back to its own spot. BTW I think there are multiple nice changes in 0.913. Much funnier to play! Currently the biggest issue seems to be that once you get some basic weapons technology and squads, then building a couple of units and casting buffs on them will create such a killer stack that it is able to

seanw3: I like those changes in your Mod. Seems like the right way to go, I hope something like that is done for beta4. It is true that requiring garrison will not slow down steamrolling - you can just raze the city and continue. If you have such a powerful stack, then I guess you should be allowed to steamroll... Pony request: conquering a city does not halve its population. Razing is limited to 20 population a turn. This way the opponent has a possibility to retake a city. L

The unrest idea is a nice step forward. I trust some factions will have bigger penalties, other smaller. It still does not address the steamroller problem though. There is still nothing to stop you from leaving the city empty and continuing the steamrolling. Maybe a city which has a high "revolt" percentage will need garrisons or you risk a total revolt (the city will join another player)?

Maybe there is a problem between the linkage of spells, equipment and technology level? I currently employ this strategy: Explore with your sovereign. If you happen to get a good champion, explore with that too. However, the champion isn't important. Kill everything you can, steal loot from those monsters you can't kill. Research shard harvesting early, conquer all shards found. It isn't that important what you do with your city

I was wondering about the early-game-multiplier you mentioned in the original post. That felt like basing decisions not on how the spells play but on XML multipliers, and got me curious about how the system works. Another issue which got me curious was that I saw (in 0.90) the AI repeatedly try to cast different spells on a magic-resistant unit. That seemed like it wasn't actually checking the effect of the spell "in real life". Just interested in this stuff, that is why I am aski

Is the spell-decision system based on XML values, or does the AI actually try the spells out to see how much of an effect they have? Maybe it could just try to see how much damage the spell does on average, or how much it changes stats etc if it doesn't do that already... XML-value based AI feels like artificial-non-intelligence to me... :)

An outpost technology which causes enemy units to lose one movement point in the ZOC of the outpost would be very useful in countering your stack-of-doom. I am wondering what is going to be done to the monsters and their treasures? Currently it is very easy to steal the items from the monsters without doing any fighting. This way you can get high-end equipment from monsters you have no possibility to beat. You can do this in the early game. This unbalances the game. I would li

I really like the way tactical battles work. Sure, there might be some things to balance in there. But the mechanics are now very good.

Make wildlands easier? -1. Well, maybe some of them, but hard ones are fun, too. But I would lessen the amount of enemy stacks so that you don't have to fight gazillion different stacks to even get to the boss.

Just throwing out ideas here: Maybe it should cost you a lot of g to convert the citizens? Something like 10g for each conquered citizen (distributed over multiple turns). Only the proportion of the population that is converted produces anything. You will need a strong economy to conquer a city. Conquering the city will initially make your economy weaker, not stronger. So, the steam-roller is slowed down.

When the AI fights monsters does it use auto-resolve? That could be a problem for the AI... Another question: how does the AI check if it should attack an enemy? Is it based just on some computed value, or does it simulate the fights? I guess simulated fights are not cheating as long as fight simulations are possible with the information available to the AI...

Part of the problem is that human players seem to be much better than the AI when it comes to collecting loot. Currently you can get killer weapons without even fighting by just luring the guard away. If you get a high-end weapon in the early game it is pretty much impossible to stop you after that. Another part of the problem is that the attacker has an advantage in the early game. Create a killer stack and surprise attack the strongest city of your enemy. Game over for that enemy. E