Burress

*This is a long post, my last effort to appeal to the devs to change course* I would like to propose a metric to make a point, I'll call if fun per game minute (FPM). So imagine some quantification of fun over the player's head as he/she plays the game, and then taking an average of that per minute. I will say that I think this what has changed the most from WoM release until now, the game plays to the experience of the player much better. For someone who plays LH like

I know many of us started posting here around the release of Gal Civ 2, which was a magnificent game, the best computer strategy game I had played up until recently. I think it is important to be aware of the different reasons we play strategy games though. This is the crux of my argument, which really has nothing to with xp split per se. I personally play them casually, usually for the stimulation to the imagination with just the added bonus of it being a strategy problem to solve. I

@sweatyboatman You are correct on many accounts. There have been many critical posts about champions. I just wanted to make one where I do my best to give as much forest perspective and as little tree-chopping as possible, and deliver it with as much punch as possible because I want it to get through. As for modding, it would take about minute's effort to "mod" out exp split. Put the file with all the champ data in an xml editing program, find all instances of champsplityada>1&

I know the arguments based on balance, numbers, and best implementations are there, but my point is an argument based on gameplay experience. Here are opportunities in the game juxtaposed with how I view them: 1. Hero arrives. Oh man, a hero has come to serve me! Great, I will put him to work! This is so awesome, there are no downsides to this! I can make him his own army and double the amount of exploring, or I can put him with my sovereign to get him some experience first. What grea

I think those are good concerns Mistwraithe. The exp formula is complicated, because 3 champions will also affect power rating which is factored in to exp already, and I don't really want to break down in to thinking up precise implementations that would work. That is a heady challenge that I do respect. I think that any optimally fun rpg-system in a strategy game should have the following characteristics. 1. You shouldn't be discouraged from using champions together.

[quote who="GFireflyE" reply="7" id="3351980"] I would be very leary to remove the XP split...especially with 0.87 increasing the strength of champions again. Stack of Doom was MoM's second major weakness. (the first was the AI of course). The last thing SD needs to do is reintroduce such an obvious flaw.[/quote] I agree that these were big weaknesses of MoM, and these same weaknesses were even more pronounced in Age of Wonders 2 and Shadow Magic. But that&#

[quote who="Azunai_" reply="4" id="3351938"] ok you don't like that mechanic. the alternative would be to have an uber stack of champions that level up quickly and make the whole empire building aspect of the game moot. honestly, in my opinion that's far worse. ever thought of that aspect?[/quote] Yes, I don't believe that it is either or. You can have your cake and eat it too. It is even possible to have the current strategy be optimal, but have the band of heroes s

I could do that, but I like it and the development team too much. I added that to the original post. I thought I would just lay out a case for why it was a bad idea with rhetorical flourish, which is basically all the power I have. *also I know it can be modded away, and I would probably do that in my own game, but I think it should be part of the design.

I cannot understand the reason for this design decision. It seems to add needless complexity and discomfort for the player without being fun or making any sense. First, the making sense part. Champions are people who become developmentally handicapped in the presence of other champions. They are smart as a whip sitting back and letting 6 squads dismantle the opposition, taking notes and learning the ways of uber-pwnage. But with two champions, what happens, is there only one pen and p

There are a lot of military concepts that could be modeled that would be more interesting than encumbrance. What about morale or supplies? Why does encumbrance have to be the one burden concept that is so hard to let go? I remember when this game had strength, dexterity, and constitution ect. for each unit, but it seemed to kick up less of a fuss when it was cast away, or maybe I wasn't paying as much attention to the forums then. Of course at this point I wouldn't want to add

That is a great idea to implement in any fashion, whether as a victory condition or just a neat quest. It could be pick a champion (non-sovereign) for just a winner takes all tournament one-on-one with the other factions as a quest, with some cool prize for winning. I have seen lots of good ideas like this, not much effort to implement, and I hope these neat ideas get swept up somewhere and not fall as dead-weight in to someone's post history.

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="10" id="3349220"] Level definitely matters. It modifies the dragons spell mastery, accuracy, attack, hp, combat speed, crit chance, breath weapon damage and defense. But I dont think it would be enough to drop it that much. [/quote] That's what I was thinking, it seems to imply that 6 (14 * 6 = 84 to 82) of the OP's level 7 dragons would be equal to one level 12 dragon. Maybe that throws the formula off, but t

[quote who="EffBie" reply="18" id="3349675"] ...I would hate to see the game not do as well as it should due to ill informed reviewers marking it down due to lack of polish and/or bugs upon release.[/quote] I would not like this overall result as well, but it would be responsible reviewing in my opinion to mark it down for being what it is, if what it is is unpolished and bug-ridden. I don't think the game is either . The game is remarkably polished and bug-sc

My opinion is a big no. By the time you have thousands of mana saved up, you have de facto won the game. Anytime I could support an infrastructure that could build up that much mana, I was just playing around anyway, and could kill off the AI at my leisure. I don't think anything is really a cheat at that point, especially small expensive bonuses to a single unit. That is probably the only time anyone uses this spell anyway, because if you are in a mana crunch these bonuses are an

I remember a Frogboy post where he said making the AI use spells correctly was difficult. It is entirely possible the current implementation is a workaround that has nothing to do with the AI priority system. If the game isn't using the values in that file for casting AI, because of a hard-coded workaround for instance, then manipulating them would be futile.

I saw the dragon in Derek's screenshot was level 12 and the one in the original poster's screenshot was level 7. I don't think level actually matters much when it comes to how hard it is to kill a dragon, but is it possible it is in this complex formula for exp?

The single biggest problem with the exp split is that it forces the player to play in a more complicated way. You can't level an all-hero army, therefore you must manage building construction with unit construction in the early game to support multiple armies led by single heroes. It is a good strategy anyway, but not all players are grognards. Especially since this game is Steam-only, many rpg fans who are mildly interested in strategy games may take interest in this game. They then need

I am sorry that didn't help. It may be the case they don't even use those files, or it uses the Steam Cloud version of files, or that number works in an unintuitive way. It would probably be more work than its worth to figure it out. I hope you figure out something that gives you the gameplay you want. The other way to get the functionality would be to remove all the negative modifiers to diplomacy. Further down in CoreAIDefs.xml is a list of scenarios and there impact on rela

[quote who="Tattyhat" reply="56" id="3347591"] I am just trying to get a true easy mode where I can enjoy the game rather than be frustrated by it. Hopefully the AI has now been stopped from declaring war on me just because it doesn't like the color of my shoes, and effectively ending my game. Now I would like to find a way to cull the AI's ridiculous growth rate and have it more on par with my own. The difficulty

You are welcome, it was a fun problem to consider actually. There may be a bad side effect to that change that I didn't think about before. It is possible that number is used to weight how many military units they build. If they never build a military at all, then that approach has a big drawback. There is no way to know until it is tested, but if the AI's have extremely low faction ratings the entire game, then that is probably why. The more I think about it, the more

I think so, I haven't tested it, but it makes the most sense. They will probably be more willing to offer and accept peace when you want it though (sometimes they hardcode a period where they don't want peace). I would bet war works the same way as before, just they won't declare it. If you would be willing to share how this works out, I would be fascinated.

It is likely that whenever they release a new patch they will overwrite that file, so you may have to change those 3 numbers again later to get the same effect. It is also possible, though I think it would be bad form of them to do so in most cases, that they may have hardcoded some automatic triggers for war. I know there is an event that causes all civs to declare war on each other, and that number will almost assuredly have no effect on that (though it may make peace treaties easier to get

There is in fact something you can do to make the AI never declare war, though it will affect every difficulty level. In the Steam->steamapps->common->FE Legendary Heroes-> Data-> English folder there is a file called CoreAIDefs.xml. If you open this, which you can do if you set it to open with notepad, you will see priorities for early game, middle game, and late game defined at the top third or half of the file. There are tags which surround priorities for the game elements.

I think a civ's vs. the world mode could be added pretty easily that might make things more interesting, even for good players. Basically, throw the kitchen sink at the players, AI as well, and have multiple different master quests that are the only way to win (so each game is not the same master quest). Monsters can stream out of the wildlands, events can pop up and terrorize civilization; basically just eliminate the checks that stop monsters from being a real PITA (such as no del

I think they could add a civ's vs. the world mode pretty easily that might make things more interesting, even for good players. Basically, throw the kitchen sink at the players, AI as well, and have multiple different master quests that are the only way to win (so each game is not the same master quest). Monsters can stream out of the wildlands, events can pop up and terrorize civilization; basically just eliminate the checks that stop monsters from being a real PITA (such as no city-razi