Austinvn

I think it's a good idea gameplay-wise. Consider that there's not much else you can do with some champions - i.e. you already have several good champions who need all the good equipment you can find, you get a new one who's not very useful by comparison and no spare gear for him, and including him in any army will both nerf the xp and weaken it (since he'd replace a more powerful trained unit). Right now steal soul is the best response you have to this situation, and

I completed this a few versions ago (just before 1.0?) and can confirm - at least back then - that Ascian spawned before I actually got the collar, I think it was at the beginning of the quest. In that case Ascian spawned just outside the borders of one of my cities, I had to avoid her for a few turns while I completed the quest, then rushed over to collar her before she decided to raze a city.

I like dodge better than defense - even when my tank hero has twice as much defense as enemies have attack, the armor/damage calculation seems to let a nontrivial amount through, if enough trained units gang up on a defender it accumulates quickly. Meanwhile my assassin can ignore a hoard of enemies, enough dodge makes you nearly invulnerable in a way defense never will. I'm assuming the OP's numbers are exaggerated, but if they're at all based on real values, I'd like

Assassins can be good without focusing your entire faction/gameplan around it - there are a couple recruitable champions that are wraiths or krax and are assassins (or can become one, for the lvl 1 versions), one of those can hit 80 dodge and - particularly if you have blind - be generally untouchable. They might not hit that 'solo the entire map' level of godliness, but they make effective tanks for a group, particularly since monsters love to focus on them and their deceptively low

Archers are pretty awful overall, imo. Look at the tech tree and compare any bow to melee weapons at the same tech level. Bows have: > Less damage than any melee weapon > Less initiative than any melee weapon > No passive or active ability (unless you count simply having range as their passive) > Two handed, so no shield either > No swarm bonus Crossbows have a (weak) special ability and allow a shield, but their damage and initia

I can live with -1 gildar per hero, usually worthwhile even early game. However I agree it's questionable to basically force a hero on you who may not actually be worth bringing along to battles, and have no way to mitigate the upkeep cost aside from the rather extreme and not always helpful steal spirit. Maybe garrisoned heroes should cost no upkeep, so at least the heroes you're not using won't be draining you? Or perhaps we could nix the hero gildar upkeep altogether - equippin

Interesting, I've been seeing the same bug with Donya on the second cast of command, but it does not unlock when command goes off cooldown. After the second command cast, it doesn't matter what I do, Donya goes over and over until she's killed every enemy - she can even cast command again and nothing happens, she just gets another turn. I usually just turn on the AI and watch her finish everything. Edit: by the way, my Donya is an assassin, if that has any

[quote who="Plutonium239" reply="60" id="3296890"] 75% to hit equals 75 hits out of 100 attacks. 40% to hit equals 40 hits out of 100 attacks. That is a 47% reduction in hits/damage. It's not really a fair comparison though since 15 of that dodge came from sources other than the Wraith dodge. 35 Wraith dodge would be equivalent to 15 non-Wraith dodge - 40% hit rate vs 60% hit rate is 33% reduction in damage sustained. Is 33% damage reduction excessive

Would it be possible to give all champions a massive percent hp boost? Like a trait that gives them +10000% hp (i.e. +100x), similar to the Yithril trait that gives all units +10% hp or whatever but much stronger and champion-only. Then hp boosting spells/equipment would be balanced; +3 to a champion's base hp would be like +300 hp after the percent modifier, comparable to what a 100-soldier trained unit gets. Same trait might add a percent damage multiplier so that champions and trained

They're paying you to ally because your power rating is far ahead of theirs - so the AIs are basically recognizing that you could stomp them in a war even though you choose not to, and thus they decide to give in and cooperate without forcing you to kill them. The alliance victory makes sense in theory, but there are some issues with it.. I would say that these issues have more to do with the power ratings and diplomacy in general, though, not the alliance victory per se. Problem

You can think of each altar as producing 1 of the 'shard' resource per turn, the main difference* between these shards and other resources is that your shard count is not cumulative, i.e. it doesn't add up from one turn to the next, but resets every turn. So each turn your 3 earth altars produce 3 of the earth shard resource, and next turn you lose those 3 and your altars generate another 3 (or 2 or 4 if you've lost or gained an altar since last turn). It's actuall

The more accurate complaint would be that most spells are situational . As everyone already beat me to saying, cull the weak and paragon are both useful to the point of being overpowered, in the right circumstances. There are situations where a single spell turns the game around for you, but there are also situations where a few dozen very specialized spells do you no good, and you're better off just meleeing something. I think every school could use more bread & butte

The volcano definitely should not instantly kill sovereigns (and thus entire factions) without the ability to recover at the nearest city, it's the only thing in the game that has this effect, it seems like an oversight. The rest is more debatable - in general I'm okay with the idea of city destruction, spamming paragon/destiny's gift, etc.. the mana costs are not trivial, I feel like there should be some dramatic way to end a game once you've stockpiled enoug

It wouldn't be an issue if only units didn't instantly lose all their extra movement when joining an army - if the army has 0 moves left and a guy with 3/4 left enters the tile, he should still have 3, I should have the option to move him again thus leaving the army - this is how it works in Civ4, for example. Instead those 3 moves disappear and the guy is now stuck with the army. Worse yet, if the army has only say 2 max movement, next turn he will only start with 2/4 moves, so even

[quote who="jutetrea" reply="32" id="3284997"] Its annoying when some other civs trade gold for twice as much as normal - i.e. 50 of their gold has 100 worth. It changes, and I'm not sure why some civs do it at some time and then not on others. [/quote] It depends on how much gold they have; if they're low (I think it kicks in somewhere <200 offhand) they start valuing what they have left at double. You can actually pull some cheesy stuff by trading th

I think his point is, it cuts down on your choices to get two identical upgrade options for the same level. Sure if you want 25% experience (which is a great bonus) it's great to have at least one of them show up, but if you wanted something else, it's redundant that two of your choices are taken up by identical perks. Ideally you'd get exactly one of those two show up, along with 4 very different things in case an experience bonus wasn't what you were looking for.

[quote who="Tuidjy" reply="11" id="3278013"] Quoting rvgr, reply 10Bah. Magnar rules. He will eat you all for lunch. And your little dog, too. Magnar is good, but not great: Yup. You can do a lot better as a leader for the Quendar. Death and Fire at level one, warlock/brilliant/hardy/wealthy/clumsy will wipe the floor with Magnar. [/quote] That's pretty much Magnar already though, just with the addition of the (imo) overpow

Just speaking about the faction I play most, Ceresa's design is pretty bizarre. Your faction is setup (adepts+death worship+binding) to quickly quickly spam death altars->shrines, giving you a nice supply of demons and mana. What are you going to do with attunement (+2 mana/turn) on your sovereign, or the shadow warg (summoner)? Your faction traits make both of these redundant. What you do need is all the spell mastery and damage you can get, since death and water magic are he

[quote quoting="post"] Removed the casting time from the Dirge of Ceresa spell Reduced Horrific Wail to 2 damage per level (instead of 3) Increased the casting cost of Curse, Blindness, Growth and Shrink [/quote] Good balance changes, nerfs to the stronger spells and a buff to the weaker one.. will have to go back to Ceresa for a game or two and see how the new balance is. I love how you guys listen to forum feedback.

What if all wraith units had a permanent Procipinee's crown-style effect, no upkeep on enchantments? You'd still have to pay the casting cost, so you wouldn't necessarily throw every buff you can on every trained unit; it's a tradeoff. Ironeers get spearmen with a free +1/hp per level, wraiths get spearmen with -1hp/level, but.. perhaps a no-upkeep stoneskin to offset their weakness, although it effectively adds 15 mana to that unit's cost, it would balance well.

Well if we're talking magic, it could well have no weight but still the proper amount of inertia - meaning it still takes two hands worth of force to swing the thing, and it still hits like a two handed maul, it just doesn't take any extra effort to lift it. Imagine the magic as a constant upward force that cancels out gravity, it wouldn't propel the thing any faster when you swing it, you'd still need two hands. Edit: it's a silly example, but this can occur in re

Consider that if you have focus, you're (at the very least) a mid level fire mage with two long range damage spells you could start casting instead from turn one. You don't often find yourself thinking - well, the enemies aren't in range yet, so I may as well blow two turns buffing myself up. That's a melee thought. If you have focus, you're ready to go and start fireballing people from turn one, you don't have those two turns to spare. No mana cost or no cast time (i.

[quote who="25Atan" reply="7" id="3275239"]Being able of summoning 3/4 fire elemental level 4 early could certainly help. But being able to spam entire armies of level 9 or 10 fire elemental would be totally game breaking imo.[/quote] That's kinda the point, though. High level, well equipped melee champions are game breaking. Damage spells fueled by plenty of shards and a high level mage are game breaking. Fully tech'ed up, spared-no-expense trained units from a maxed out fort

Yeah, both could work Kongdej. Remove the limit on summons, and improve the higher end summons (need more of those, too) - but also increase their casting cost/upkeep. Then you can choose between several cheap summons or one good one for the same cost, depending on the situation. I want to see epic 100+ mana/10+ upkeep summons on the scale of other strategic spells, balanced against the existing ~30 mana/1 upkeep weak and expendable ones. The only way we can have the epic summons with

Solid suggestion, the game really does need something to limit early rapid expansion and later conquest-driven snowballing, both are so good it's kinda the only way to play right now. It makes sense too, trying to manage a larger empire would lead to increased unrest in general. Some refinements: the first few cities should have no penalty - say 2-4 'free' cities depending on map size. A single-city empire just isn't viable, and you don't want to punish players for doing t