Werewindlefr

I voted fair. Currently, Fallen Enchantress has huge scaling and pacing issues. While it's a 100% balance problem (and as such, fixable by mods and within the scope of beta 5), it still makes the game a whole lot less fun to play to me. It also makes the game content-poorer, because only good balance and pacing gives relevance to all content. If there's no point recruiting Darklings or Ogres, then it's just as if they weren't in the game in the first place. The AI stil

Backswing is a poorly implemented mechanic and you should wait until they polish it (or ditch it entirely). And by polish, I mean make it work like it should work: every soldier who fails his attack roll gets a reroll. (Right now, they only get a reroll if they ALL fail, which is unlikely for groups.)

[quote]what difference does it make if you call it "attack twice" instead of just buffing the main number?[/quote] A huge one. Attacking with a dagger fails already on leather. Attacking with a sword, not so much. [quote]totally equivalent from a gameplay point of view apart that there are minimal difference in numbers outcome in few situations[/quote] I don't see "weak against any sort of armor starting with level" to be a "few situations".

[quote]They are also heavier and reduce initiative by 4. Compare that to a sword that increases it by 2-4. 8 initiative makes a huge difference.[/quote]You're right, I forgot the sword's init bonus, which might unbalance things in favor of the sword. However, maces cost *no* metal. [quote]2x6 of a dagger would be more effective against low armour and high dodge compared to a 1x12 sword[/quote] From a statistic point of view, this is simply not true. If I

My point remains: there's a use for maces, fighting armored enemies. And I can assure you they're better than swords at doing this. And they're less good than spears, but let you use a shield and are better at fighting unarmored troops than spears. So basically, maces are between swords and spears, a sort of compromise.

[quote]like i said, you are axiomatically assuming plate will always be the best choice[/quote] Considering how much better a chain/plate troop is compared to a leather/naked one, it's always the best choice. Even if it costs you all your metal, 1 full-plated, horse mounted + late game weapon troop will crush entire AI armies with barely a scratch. And they don't even cost THAT much. <div id="ctl00__Content__RepeaterReplies_ctl22__Rep

[quote who="ddd888" reply="16" id="3236164"] this is not common, its very rare tbh[/quote] And so we should base the balance on the fact that the AI produces only rubbish armies, or should we base it on what a competent player would do? [quote]I dunno, always thought maces were rubbish too. No matter how you put the math you still have more than 20% lost turns due to -4 initiative. And maces weigh tons and tons compared to swords or spears.[/quote] Against 2

Armor reduction : Max damage = Attack * Attack /(Attack+Defense). For very high defense values (compared to the attack), this is ~ Attack ^2 / Defense For very high attack values (compared to the defense) this is ~ Attack So, against unarmored/poorly armored enemies, damage grows linearly with attack. As armor increase, higher attack has increasing returns, because more attack means more base damage AND more armor pi

Your analysis of backswing is wrong - it is actually completely worthless since every member of a multi-soldier unit rolls accuracy separately, and backswing only works when they ALL fail. Which is very rare. So backswing is only good for low-accuracy heroes. Maybe henchmen. Maces are better than sword against leather + shield or chain. They take an initiative penalty, but swords have a really hard time with armor (remember: damage increases quasi-quadratically against high ar

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="10" id="3231555"] Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 3The worst is when the roads go through the wildlands...... Please don't refer to Michigan as "the wildlands". Thanks.[/quote] Plymouth's fine compared to other places in MI...

I'm going to start sounding like a broken record, but how much would the AI understand a change in those core values and adapt? If they could pull it off, then yeah, there could be so much awesome modding in the future!

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="73" id="3227909"]Civ IV must have really sucked. Lots of mods. [/quote]One must have some nerve to criticize a game because it had lots of mods when its lead dev' is one of the most famous modders ever XD. Speaking about mods: Frogboy, what will be the AI's ability at adapting itself to the rule changes in mods? Will we have access to some XML descriptors for the AI? This is the one thing that scares me the most about mods - s

[quote who="Glazunov1" reply="48" id="3227349"] Large empires are great, but that's not the same thing as a Strangle strategy. This leads me to wonder whether we're discussing quite the same thing. [/quote] Fair enough. My point was that there was no "small empire vs. large empire" balance. The only valid strategy in FE - based on empirical evidence, not theorycraft - is constant expansion; there is no incentive to keeping an

The AI has a long way to go before the game is truly enjoyable in single player though.

[quote]Similarly, you could, in XML, make it so that every outpost costs 50 gold per turn. Or 1000. I don't recommend that but you get the idea.[/quote] Yes but here's the problem: will the AI adapt? Will the AI understand that maintenance costs means it needs to choose where to put its outposts carefully and not put them at every resource, just on the one it needs? I understand the game is very modable, and that's a really nice thing; however, the AI needs to be a

[quote who="Glazunov1" reply="26" id="3226788"] Quoting Werewindlefr, reply 24 Quoting Frogboy, reply 16 The counter, however, is that the Stranger's empire is brittle. If you're everywhere, you're very susceptible to a focused strike. Why is it necessarily brittle? A bigger empire means more money and resources to pay for troops, and so more troops to defend a bigger frontier. Because a lot of the time you're putting up o

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="16" id="3226663"] The counter, however, is that the Stranger's empire is brittle. If you're everywhere, you're very susceptible to a focused strike. [/quote]Why is it necessarily brittle? A bigger empire means more money and resources to pay for troops, and so more troops to defend a bigger frontier. I know mathematics are only *part* of the balance, but still: from a purely arithmetic point of view, if you quadruple the area of

"You don't get an attack value anywhere close to a units defense value. " Remember though: 10 attack vs 10 defense gives 5 max damage, 20 attack against 20 defense gives 10 max damage - but the HP stayed more or less the same! To get the same max damage with 20 attack, you need 60 defense. My belief is that armor is mostly fine - maybe SLIGHTLY strong mid-late game, but it costs a LOT.

[quote who="mqpiffle" reply="2" id="3216488"]You are misinformed. Defense works in a much less intrusive manner than that. I don't now the exact formula, but it certainly isn't DAMAGE = ATTACK - DEFENSE. [/quote] Max Damage = Atk*(Atk/(Atk+Def)) So if the defense equals the attack, max damage is 1/2 the attack.

Remember though: the benefits of material and grain increase throughout the game via city growth/buildings and technological advances, whereas the benefits of essence stay the same, aside from one conclave bonus. Either you make essence powerful compared to early game buildings -the way inspiration is now- and weak late-game, or you have to make it scale.

[quote who="Lantec" reply="40" id="3207964"] Quoting psychoak, reply 38College professors are a lot like lawyers, many of them are the economic equivalent of a parasite. not sure I'd insult the parasites like that.....[/quote]Another example of anti-intellectualism and promotion of ignorance, always using the similar conspiracy theory-like arguments. I know professors - I'm a Ph. D student in another field of science - and this is complete cliche. There&#39

So, the solution is 4X-loving forumites with no background is scientific data analysis to think themselves more knowledgeable than those 'misguided/lying' climate scientists? Let's be honest: they know what they're talking about a lot better than we do - and they have peer reviews, conferences, and spend a lot of time facing criticism and re-verifying data and conclusions so they won't have to shy away from this criticism. The only reason anyone think there&#

The AI is not enchanting its cities or building enough production improvements...

Is the AI building decent armies now?

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="17" id="3206759"] Quoting Werewindlefr, reply 15Frogboy, is the AI really this much better at making solid armies of quality troops, or do my eyes deceive me? The best way I can describe good game AI is: It's generally smart but specifically stupid.[/quote] What I meant is that it *looks* like it has learned how to build much better armies, more cohesive forces. That was its major flaw in the previous betas. The