merlinme

[quote who="Mytheos" reply="24" id="3375858"]Only thing I can think of is that I use Arcane Monolith and maybe go crazy with it some.[/quote] Aha! That makes a lot of sense. I didn't even understand how you were meeting all the AIs by turn 20, let alone having them all declare war on you. It probably also explains why you find it so hard to defend your empire with a single stack, if it's so spread out. It does therefore seem to be the way you play the game tha

I'm 99% sure that damage decreases as soldiers get killed. It's fairly easy to see that attack is listed as "x 4" or "x 3" or "x 2" or with no multiplier, and this seems to tally up fine with the damage that's actually inflicted.

It is being done. If you don't like your heroes being killed by city militia, make sure you kill a few of them before they get to attack.

One possibility I was wondering about with Tame is to only make it work on beasts which are equal to or lower level than the caster. That would still make it useful, just not quite so overpowered at the start of the game.

Further to my previous post, in my game Yithril demanded tribute, I refused and Yithril instantly declared war on me, whereupon the Oracle (who had previously been happy with me) instantly declared war on me. So I guess this is what you're describing. But as I said, this is past turn 100; of the other two AIs, Gilden was at war with Yithril and is happy with me, and I haven't actually met Tarth yet. I consumed a shard to crush the Oracle's army, and I haven't even seen a

Yeah, personally I'd try bribing the non-aggression pact AI or do the quest. Or you could just hit "End Turn" 33 times. [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

[quote who="Mytheos" reply="20" id="3375149"]the longest I went without having the majority of Kingdoms at war with me was around turn 40[/quote] I'm genuinely puzzled how you can play five games on large maps with 4-6 opponents and have that happen every time. I play with four opponents on a medium map and I've never had that happen. The only thing I can think is that if you increase the number of opponents you increase the chance of encountering an

Woohoo! Will we have to start a new game to get the AI changes?

[quote who="Mytheos" reply="15" id="3375098"]Are you guys essentially building nothing but militias right off the bat and sending wave after wave at the closest kingdoms 1-2 cities?[/quote] No. I train a bare minimum of troops to give my sovereign a full stack, preferably free gold maintenance troops, and then I send him to take out monster lairs and do quests. Clearing lairs means I can settle good city sites. After Drills to get the +1 army size and altars from magic I concentrate on e

I really struggle to understand how you can have five or six kingdoms at war with you by turn 15-20. In my current Ridiculous game, on a medium randomly generated map with the default number of AIs (four?) it's about turn 50, I've met three AIs in the last twenty turns or so. In terms of power rating I'm slightly more powerful than one, somewhat less powerful than the second, and quite a lot less powerful than the third. The two weaker ones are happy with me, probably because we&#

[quote who="jutetrea" reply="17" id="3374925"]The only one I like is removing the ability to cull TACTICALLY summoned units.[/quote] You don't like the idea of making the Pyre of Man something actually worth summoning? If Heart of Fire etc. bonuses are halved then basically you do +1 damage rather than +2 for the two essence case, +2 damage rather than +3 for the 3 essence case. This doesn't seem like a massiver nerf to me. One I'd forgotten:

[quote who="Mistwraithe" reply="60" id="3374616"]serious exploits should certainly be fixed as a pretty high priority IMO[/quote] I think it depends on the type of exploit. I really couldn't care less about custom faction exploits, for example. No claims are made about them being balanced. If you find them unbalanced, don't use them. I don't care too much about "exploits" which essentially revolve around playing the game optimally. There can be an issue with the AI

[quote who="Fallenchar" reply="12" id="3374738"]Btw, you can only have 4 essence on a Fortess if you have the Enchanters trait.[/quote] I'm fairly sure you can get a four essence city if you complete a Wildlands.

[quote who="Mytheos" reply="8" id="3374705"]There is simply no way to protect your lands reasonably[/quote] Um, surely that should be "I haven't yet found a way to defend my lands reasonably"? It sounds like you are taking a long time in your games. In a game where everyone starts off weak and gets stronger, then the way to win is to do things faster than your opponents (especially high difficulty AI opponents who get stupid bonuses). You don't have to use exploits, bu

I still think 4 lots of +4 buffs is crazy overpowered, and three lots of +3 buffs is fairly overpowered. If people think +1 only is too much of a nerf though, it could be +0.5, rounded up. i.e. +1, +1, +2, +2 for 1/2/3/4 essence. So it's still worth casting on 3 or 4 essence cities, just not so powerful. It's the cumulative effect which is ridiculous; if you use all buff city spells, the total effect is a square of the essence. One and two essence give y

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I had previously realised that if your capital was at maximum population then bulding a pioneer was a good idea. However I had not realised that you could reduce population further by queuing them up. Presumably a relatively simple fix would be to only pay the cost for the building when you actually start building it, as opposed to when you queue it up. I guess that complicates things if you've queued up things you don't have the reso

It's pretty easy to get 100% fire resistance if you use a cloak plus one other +50%, e.g. a protection from fire spell.

Paragon can get you a lot of levels if you want to "retire" your sovereign and create a super hero.

[quote who="Sythion" reply="50" id="3373491"] No 4x game should ever require conquering the entire world.[/quote] Er, Legendary Heroes doesn't require conquering the entire world. You can win by quest and you can win by building the towers. AI players will surrender if you're overwhelmingly more powerful than them. I agree it can be a bit a slog at the end, but I actually think Legendary Heroes does reasonably well at reducing the slog. If nothing else

Otherwise known as the "Stop Chaosti" thread. [e digicons]:grin:[/e] The idea is that this is a list of features/ exploits which can make the game too easy, or make one particular strategy overwhelmingly better than others. 1) Having Heart of Fire etc. give +1 per essence is too much. Just make them +1. Maybe reduce the mana cost. 2) Make roadbuilding a maximum of one tile per turn. 3) It should not be possible to cast Cull the Weak on summoned units. Otherwis

Some interesting ideas. I actually think the game does pretty well for late game tedium (which is always a problem with games like this). You have a choice of ways to win, and there are always quests if you want a bit of light relief. I agree though the user interface would benefit from a bit of attention. The two I'd most like to see are being able to choose which armour to upgrade, and a screen for your heroes so you can find them if you've managed to leave them guarding a city or o

It's correct that you can upgrade from the build screen, but I have wondered what would happen if your city expands over an unbuilt resource, as you have to click on it to build it initially, don't you? I think I also "lost" a quest when an AI city expanded over the top of it.

My last Ridiculous game (medium map) lasted 234 turns, something like that anyway. That was the longest game I've played, and the only time I've got to a level five settlement. If I don't think I'm clearly winning after 100 turns, something has gone wrong. To put it another way, by the time I get a level four settlement, the game is practically over. So while bigger settlements are nice, they're not really something I focus on.

In terms of watching movies, I still think one of the funniest examples is Braveheart. The climactic battle is supposed to be the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which was fought by Scottish spearmen defending a bridge which was too narrow for more than two horseman to advance at once. Do you remember all those Scottish spearmen advancing in formation to attack the English forces which had been split in two by the bridge, with the result that the the troops who had crossed over the river were

Crushing blow is very handy, as is being able to have a shield, however you do take an initiative hit, and you do lose a turn. To be honest with a fully upgraded fortress I don't think it makes an awful lot of difference which weapon type you choose, you'll be winning anyway. I tend to make a few very strong units which I can keep alive to go up levels, but I can see that lots of +4 cheap troops would be powerful. In terms of which weapons are best, club