Aiel117

It's great that quest rewards matter now. It was kind of useless before to go and spend a few turns just to get a normal axe when I could instead kill the nearby hero and get the Axe of Awesome. However, the new Panca Archers are crazy good. 11 attack x 5 units, 17 initiative and impulsive?!?! Basically, I took some damage but was able to clear our 3 bandits. After that, I "rescued" the refugees who then joined me and we started killing bone ogres, fire e

First, as others have said, this .9 patch was a step in the right direction. I like that there is a minimum 3 turns to create a unit; this stops unit spam and makes buildings a worthwhile choice. That said, there's a big bug/exploit to turn production into gildar. 1) The easiest way is as Quendar/Magnar, design a slave unit with as low of a production value as you can (1 works well for this example). 2) Go to a city with a sizeab

Nice video! Thanks for showing us the coming attractions. If barracks costs gildar per turn and reduces production cost (which also reduces maintenance costs), then building barracks should only be done with an excess of gildar and many units coming up. Besides the ways mentioned above to fix it, I'd like to see something different thrown into the equation such as barracks give +1 attack or otherwise boost stats of units. Then it's a trade off gildar per tu

Great work! I've been thinking along the same lines. Just wanted to mention, though, that while almost all of your suggestions rock, we want to stay VERY far away from extra food or grain = growth, at any percent. Population is by far the best resource in the game. It gives research, which almost nothing else gives readily, and it also gives production, and can produce gildar if taxed, and levels up cities, and city radius. Anything that increases populatio

I power game all the time, but there are so many temptations to just roll into the fun of it just for the fun of it. It really is a great product!

HenriHaki, 100 people = 10 research (less unrest), 10 production (less unrest), and (tax rate * 100) gildar. So 100 people with 0% tax rate = 10 research, 10 production, 0 gildar. Set tax rate to 10% (produces 80% unrest), and you'd get 2 research, 2 production and 10 gildar. At certain thresholds, cities level up from population. At 60 people, level 2. At 200, level 3. This usually provides a minor bonus like -10% unrest or so through a new buildin

I think there are two issues. 1) is understanding what initiative does easily for weapons and why it should exist, and 2) is not letting initiative affect actions that it shouldn't such as spell casting and movement. Most games end up solving 1), this fast/slow powerful/weak weapon problem and all the math related to it, by adding a simple derived stat called damage per second. Of course, in this game, we could call it DPT, damage per turn, and a turn being defined as

There's definitely a lot that could be done. I'd imagine some champions would have tried to create their own cities. Maybe defeating that city will yield a city plus a champion. Maybe defeating them will only kill them. Maybe they would want diplomatic capital to join your cause. Other champions would be real mercenaries, out in the wilds killing monsters with a band of other units. They'd want gold or other resources, and would be gildar an

Nice find!

Currently, the "value" of trades in diplomacy is static, regardless of the situation. At least, to a large degree (I have noticed the value of declaring war is different against different neighbors; I'm guessing that's based on power level difference?). For instance, I could have a massive army at my neighbor's doorstep. They would still create an economic treaty between our kingdoms for just a few gildar, and then I'd have a nice road to point the way to t

Does anyone else champion farm for items? And I don't mean recruit, because teching up for higher level heroes is only so valuable. I mean killing rival heroes of the opposite alignment. The lower level ones are equipped reasonably with maybe a weapon worth 30-60 gildar. The effort/reward balance for killing them is okay. But some of the higher level ones are worth 600-1200 gildar! And they tend to be pushovers, casting self buffs skills even as they

Besides simultaneous damage or just one way damage, there are some compromises: damage only if you don't kill the defending units, simultaneous damage but limit to one counterstrike, or so forth. This makes for some tactical decisions. Units with high armor suddenly gain value for absorbing the brunt of the blow, and then units with higher attack can sweep in and mop up. The problem isn't glass cannons. There should always be role for a high damage uni

There are two types of upgrades! Individual unit upgrades are what you are referring to Bingjack. Unit X was created 20 turns ago, and now a new robo-spear is available. Hitting the upgrade button there takes gildar. The second type of upgrade is not to an individual but rather to the design plan itself. So making the unit "upgrade" through the design interface means that all future spearmen will have the latest in robo-spear technology when they are created.

One interesting element that I think few realize is that each faction does have different units, in that each faction has different base stats. The Yithril have higher STR base and lower INT. That makes their units deal more damage, but learn slower and less magic resist. It's just not obvious at all until you are already in the game.

Monsters are not much of a deterrent to city expansion. I've setup camp right in the middle of an ogre and a bone ogre and it took them 5+ turns just to attack and destroy the helpless city. When I create a city two steps from monsters, it's almost never an issue. To make the world a deterrent to expansion, you'd need Slag/Forest Drake level monsters with some frequency who aggressively seek to kill you. Like Civ barbarians, who take any opportunity to ki

Master of Orion 2 handled negative and positive traits well. If I recall correctly, you'd get 2 or 3 points or so from a -1 to a basic stat but it would cost you 4 points to get a +1 to that stat. The idea being that negative traits are okay, but are really inefficient and are a strategic choice. A better balance would be to have weak and conscripted only give back 5 points or less. I really like grain providing a cap on units, but it also encourages multi-cities

seanw3 , I understand where you are coming from and it sounds like a fun strategy. I saw a portion of those videos, and I wondered how gilden got so powerful, though. Aggressive use of clubmen can end the game long before anyone reaches longbows. And that's the problem with dominant strategies; they override others in terms of % success rate. City

Weak militia go 17 -> 24 -> 31 -> 38 -> 45, gaining about 7 hp per level. The catch is that HP is only of minor significance. Let's say I have 5 stacks of militia and they are level 2 with 24 hp. I get first strike and deal about 45 damage. The remaining enemies hit my units, and might be smart enough to concentrate and kill one of my guys. If not, I can retreat them out and continue with 4 remaining. Plus, even if one dies, it only takes 1

Yes, I can confirm this happens with non-modded games. Here's how it happens to me. Take a normal game file Click on edit on the pioneer Make changes, and save it as something like "bugged" Exit the application and start it over again Create a new game entirely Create that unit, "bugged" It will have a few differences: cannot settle, can build roads, can propose I noticed it when I tried to

Also, defense! If defense outweighed offensive, then my strategy would change.

I'm liking .86 for being sparser on the goodie huts and for not allowing champions to rule the day, and for toning down easy to access mobility. Overall it made me rethink what I was doing. That said, I'm still seeing dominant strategies after playing a few games. Definition: strategic dominance (commonly called simply dominance ) occurs when one <a title="Strategy (game theory)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_%28game_t

Winning quickly does not help # of points.

Thanks!!

Does anyone have a list of keyboard shortcuts? Specifically, I'm looking for the "next available unit" command so I can easily find the next unit who still has movement points left. Or, if this keyboard shortcut doesn't exist, it should!

Anything that makes city spamming a good idea is bad. Right now, additional cities are great because: Roads to all cities with trading tech Additional production is significant, even with 1 person, because of materials +growth buildings like inn and pub can drastically increase the kingdom's research, production and gildar The counter argument is that cities level up and gain bonuses. The best one is gallows, that increases ev