Simplicity123

I'm playing on a medium sized map. I upped the number of AIs from the default of 5 to 6. It's around mid-game (season 162) and I still have not even had *contact* with the other AIs. I've explored about a fifth of the world map at this point. I have about 4 cities and 3 outposts. Not really sure what's going on with the AIs here. If there was a no-fog cheat I'd just turn off the fog and take a look. I am on a peninsula and ther

I am Oracle C, with Death II and Water I. I cast Steal Spirit on a Champion with Death I. The champion dies and I get nothing as far as I can tell... Am I misunderstanding what the spell does? Does it only let me steal higher level rankings? Why would it let me kill my champion then? If that's the case, can we clarify the text and prevent useless champion death?

I'm okay with this at some level, but it winds up making armies a hard counter for sovs. Which is fine if your sov can stay in the backlines and dish out damage while protected by their own armies.

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="112" id="3237416"] Quoting Bellack, reply 109 You know Brad I have read many comments over the last two years (has it already been that long) that you have written referring to GalCIV and many of those lead me to believe that you do not realise just how awsome GALCiv:TA actully was. That game was a masterpiece with only two problems 1. No Tactical combat. 2. No MP but other than that you made the true aire to Masters of Orion 2 (MOO3 was a POS

[quote who="Mistwraithe" reply="97" id="3237280"]not want to see the quest system cut. It just needs to be improved. I got a real buzz out of the quest which allowed me to build that theatre for the performers. Now OK this was mainly the reward, the quest itself was pretty mundane, but it helps demonstrate the potential for quests. I also rather enjoyed the arena 'quest' even though it was only a series of combats, it had me increasingly worried as the combats got harder and ground my

I hate to be so negative without offering a suggestion, so here's my advice. Hark, and take heed! Or something. Also, lo. Step 1: List your features. Step 2: Make each feature AWESOME and integrated into the whole. Step 3: If you can't do that, or you don't have time to do it, cut the feature. My attempt at the above: ---------------------------- Features: 1) Sov/Champi

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="92" id="3237142"]I am gladdened by your warm thoughts of GalCiv. But, in terms of *polish* (not raw content, AI, balance, etc.) I can't see how the two can be compared. The mechanics are largely hidden from the player. The game doesn't even have a real tool tip system. Why is my colony making X instead of Y? Trial and error. I agree that TA has a ton more maturity behind it in terms of practiced game mechanics. But that's on

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="86" id="3237044"]While WOM had a different game team from our other games, FE is the same games team that made GalCiv:TA plus new additions. I can't say I agree with the original poster, particularly with regards to our development process. We have a traditional QA/development process in addition to having public betas. The public betas help us make a better game. And we appreciate the feedback we get. But something like 87% of the a

[quote who="mqpiffle" reply="10" id="3236779"]Absolutely. I would think +1 init +1/AS for 10 mana would be more than fair. [Edit: I also personally think Haste should have a dodge component to it, something like +5 / +3/AS.][/quote] Haste is one of the few spells I even consider casting. Remember casting haste means your sov won't be dishing out 20 or so damage from one method or another.

[quote who="sweatyboatman" reply="15" id="3236206"] So I go looking around some more. Second city expansion. And there's of course some Swamp Drake or whatever they're called sitting on that. This happens ALL the time. ALL the time. Talk about a pacing problem. The game blocks me from taking the second step in any reasonable 4X game. Now whatever plans I had for an opening game are gone. I'm losing. Might as well restart. This sentiment shows up a lot on this forum

[quote who="Kongdej" reply="10" id="3236105"] Quoting Bobofett, reply 8Strange they aren't immune to attack magic, wonder if it's a bug No creature is "Immune to Magic" they just have +100 spell resistance so usually just take half damage from magical damage spells, also you can at some late-point, with a super levelled hero, brute force your way through immune to magic with enough spell mastery. Sincerely ~ Kongdej[/quote] I wish the descriptio

Also, to say that the RNG is merciless is a cop out. This isn't a roguelike. It's a TBS. People expect some level of fair play, and have since Civ I. If you make a game that it takes you an hour or two to figure out that you were guaranteed to lose from the beginning... Well, that's a pretty badly designed game. You can make the monsters that guard lairs of secondary expansions weaker. They just haven't done that. Probably becaus

[quote who="Bobofett" reply="1" id="3235497"]You don't need a seriously leveled sov to take down Ophidians, I do it often with some magic and some spearmen backing up my sov. But sounds like you just got dealt a bad hand by the RMG[/quote] Ophidians are immune to magic. Also, they eat spearman for lunch. I had a level 6 champion, 2 sand golems, and a level 6 sovereign get crushed by an army of 3 Orphidians. Any RNG is adjustable.

One serious pacing problem I've run into is the following scenario... I build my capital city, send my sov out to scout around. Find an area for another city, and sure enough there's a Army of Ophidians sitting right next to it. That makes that expansion area completely useless to me for a good chunk of the game (until I can seriously level my sov). So I go looking around some more. Second city expansion. And there's of course some Sw

[quote who="Austinvn" reply="6" id="3222137"]The unrest reduction is potentially powerful, but just doesn't work in practice because tax rate is empire-wide. I experimented with a level 5 champion who had started with path of the governor, and I got him a few upgrades to it - he could reduce unrest by some ridiculous amount (I think 50% in total? Something like that). It worked pretty well while I had one city - I pumped the tax rate up to high or brutal and still had 0% unrest, I was get

Agreed. They fixed random techs because this annoyed the heck out of people in the tech tree. The same annoyance applies to perk choices. The "Path" system is essentially a weighting system that makes these random choices a little less random so you can specify character roles... but really, a perk tree (in other words, just letting us pick whatever we have the prereqs for) would just solve everything. The only problem with it is what if everyone kept picking

[quote who="ddd888" reply="11" id="3220999"] quoting post Half the fun of playing the game is using your sovereign as a mage. Magic plays a core role in the game. But only one out of five specialization paths really focus on this ability. That seems like a waste. I propose two mage paths: one with reduced mana cost and increased damage. And one which allows you to cast two spells in a round. Note that this is a high mana drain path choice.

[quote who="mqpiffle" reply="5" id="3220855"] Quoting UmbralAngel, reply 2Rather than add more paths or replace existing ones, another option is to put in specialization classes. So maybe once you reach level 10 you get to choose one of three new paths that are determined by the original path you chose. This would allow more customizations like teh ones you suggested. I was just thinking something along these lines![/quote] By level 10, the game is over or close to it.

If the idea of governance (keeping a champion in your city to improve it) is to be kept, it needs to be improved. As is, the path is really low-reward. Consider, to have an effective governor, first you must field a champion for a while. At least get them to level 3-4. Focus on governing traits, which are useless on the battlefield. (Why are we learning governance on the battlefield anyways?) Then once they are actually strong enough to be of some use and p

Half the fun of playing the game is using your sovereign as a mage. Magic plays a core role in the game. But only one out of five specialization paths really focus on this ability. That seems like a waste. I propose two mage paths: one with reduced mana cost and increased damage. And one which allows you to cast two spells in a round. Note that this is a high mana drain path choice. You don't get the mana reduction, and you don't get the damag

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="26" id="3217351"]We've gone from debating whether units are glass canons to whether they're too tough. As for cities, the free defenders are there to defend against minor threats. They shouldn't be able to hold off an army on their own. I think of them as being like the police. [/quote] Agreed. Shouldn't be able to hold off an army on their own, but I think militia should still play a role in a battle. Even

[quote who="Bingjack" reply="6" id="3216523"]is that the numbers are low, whole numbers. In order to have each upgrade be minor, you go from pieces of armor having 1-3 defense to having 3-5 defense. Then that gain is multiplied by the total number of armor slots a trooper can wear armor on, and you end up with a total net gain that is greater than the damage rating of a standard hand axe and such, when you move from leather to chain armor. That one tech tree step almost totally

This also becomes a problem because it contributes to one problem I see in gameplay which is that you wind up with a single death fleet (the sovereign and champions) and many cities. So you wind up running that one fleet all over the place trying to protect all of your cities all of the time because your other units just can't handle the task.

The biggest pacing problem in this game is how the defense stat works. My understanding of how it works is that it takes 1 damage away from whatever defense type it is. The problem with this is that it rapidly renders units completely useless, sometimes with a single tech level. You can see this very clearly with City Archers. They go from dealing 14 damage when there's no armor involved to 1 plink a shot. It also becomes very apparent as sovereigns

Another suggestion... Get RID of idling. Do not create an incentive to idle your town. Do not create incentives to idle your recruits/sovereign. Why? Because it's boring that's why. No one wants to play the park your king in a city game. These sorts of games are about incremental growth (and by these sorts I mean RPGs and TBSs). If you want to make recruits govern cities, let them do it from the field and pretend that magic takes care of