merlinme

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="16" id="3414927"]I have casted a lot of Fireballs through Annointed by Fire without any of the +20% damage abilities (and without being a Mage at all) and I have generally been underwhelmed with the damage. I have had it kill quite a few low HP things, but most of the stuff I really care about is still standing afterwards.[/quote] Fireball has its uses. Killing ranged units before they can damage or kill your heroes or ranged units springs to mind. It

[quote who="Borg999" reply="11" id="3414747"]6. Death - blind, death - otherwise "meh"[/quote] Are you kidding me?? You missed out Curse, Mass Curse, Wither and Sacrifice. At the start of the game Wither can win you battles that you couldn't win otherwise. If cast strategically it's more expensive but cannot be resisted, it can be cast outside of your territory and has a short cooldown. This makes early monsters a walk in the park, especially on higher difficulty levels where

I build High Towers (+1 Zone of Control, often means you don't need to build another Pioneer) and Stables (double movement, very handy if you have a few near your best fortress for speeding troops to the front line) quite a lot. I've not really used any of the others. The combat bonuses seem fairly pointless as I'm usually on the offensive a long way from my outposts. One outpost upgrade which people are now talking since the Undead release is the one which g

You were about to not play the best 4x game of recent years because you didn't understand the interface? That seems... a touch hasty. Admittedly parts of the interface could be better explained (you shouldn't have to go to the forums to have them explained), but I would kinda hope that you'd at least find the City List and the Options screen.

[quote who="Wetballs" reply="23" id="3414261"]Wow, I never realized that there were plusses and minuses displayed on that screen[/quote] It's a good screen. Personally I think the plusses and minuses should show up as a mouseover tool tip on the relationship bar when interacting with the AI. Ok, you feel Cool towards me, but why is that? Or, make clicking on the relationship bar from the AI interaction screen take you directly to the Foreign Relations screen. Maybe

[quote]Usually right at the beginning of the game I will design a unit with the +3 HP trait, the +3 defense trait, and the +2 initiative trait with leather, a shield, and either hammer or spears (if using defensive). [/quote] Sounds like a good strategy to me. I would probably choose something like +3 defense initially when my troops have almost no armour, and probably +2 initiative and Underdog (+3 attack vs. troops of higher level). Underdog is an excellent value early game damage e

Great, glad to be of service. Is there any intention to make the Pyre of Man cost less mana? In several months of talking about improving balance on the forums, just about the only thing there was ever universal agreement on was that summoning the pyre of man was ludicrously overpriced for a three turn summons.

[quote who="Derek Paxton" reply="1" id="3413808"]the Death Demon was only allowed to summon another Assassin Demon when the first was dead[/quote] That's not what I saw at all. The Death Demon summoned one Assassin Demon a turn for something like its first four turns. Given that nearly all of my army was suffering from Fear, there's just no way my army could have been killing one Assassin Demon a turn. And in fact when I killed the Death Demon he clearly had three summoned Ass

Off the top of my head: 1: rush with Cyndrum Demons, leather and high dodge troops? No other race can do that. 2: The only sovereigns that start with water magic are Karavox and Procipinee. So it's not unique, but if you want a Blizzard heavy approach, Ceresa is a good choice. 3: use Curse, Infection, GraveSeal, Blind, Slow, to nerf an entire army? No other race can do that. 4: Corrupt all non Death, non Water Shards, cast strategic Wither for maybe -10 Att

Really interesting read. I've worked in a few different places as a programmer, and the place I've settled is not necessarily where I'd make the most money. But I like the culture where I am, and I like the fact that there is an established team who have all been here > 5 years, and I like the fact that it's a relatively small company where you're given responsibility and trusted to get on with it. We too went through a slightly disastrous expansion before pretty m

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="33" id="3413298"]Season is 271. The whole magic tree is researched[/quote] Again, this is probably to some extent the way you prefer to play. My games rarely last past turn 170, and I never finish researching. If you are focused on winning early (as I am), then shard troops, summons + high dodge troops with leather armour are fine. Cyndrum demons are actually quite powerful near the start of the game. If you like the later troops with lots of

So you're winning the game with a faction you don't like much and you think they're weak? [e digicons]:grin:[/e] [quote who="Raiddinn" reply="28" id="3413016"]If I wasn't casting curse I wouldn't be able to do any damage half the time. I think Ceresa is probably 75% of the power of my entire 7 unit army.[/quote] Well... yes? One of the great strengths of Resoln is your sovereign has Water and Death magic. So you get Mantle of Oceans, Blizzard, Mass C

It is very useful to have at least one fortress on a two or three Essence site, so you can train troops with all the buff spells. Your capital is a good candidate for this. However I only ever really use one fortress to train my troops, so after I have my main fortress set up I would make any two or three Essence site a Conclave. There are several Conclave buildings which benefit from more Essence, Alchemy Lab springs to mind (gives extra production based on Essence). Handy for building the T

[quote who="joeball123" reply="23" id="3412654"]Trog Blood - +2 Attack if at under 50% health. Grants the Berserk ability, which increases the unit's attack and initiative by 2 but places it under AI control; spellcaster units which are Berserk will not use spells. Unlocks the Juggernaut special units. Does not grant any extra unit design traits.[/quote] Extremely informative post by joeball, as always. I hadn't really taken it in that different races had different unit design

Very interesting- they sound like positive changes, or at least, I agree with the intention behind the changes you've made, who knows how it will work out in practice! I'll give it a try.

I'm interested to give XtraSavageAI a try. If nothing else it would be a change from the AI's current play style. Could you give a bit more detail on what exactly you've changed though? a: The AI should build some more powerful individual units, going for quality not quantity, yes? b: Expansion: you put a higher priority on late game expansion? What does that mean, build more Pioneers? In general what should XtraSavageAI do more of than vanilla AI before turn

[quote who="Primal_Savage" reply="21" id="3412412"]The "XtraSavageAI" does not increase the level of the creatures as opposed to +4 levels in Ridiculous. Thus, it is as if you're facing normal level creatures. Which is why I don't recommend using it.[/quote] I'm a bit confused; you've divided your mod into two parts, XtraSavageAI.xml [The AI mods I did - Applicable to all difficulty levels] , which I would expect

[quote who="Illauna" reply="4" id="3412426"]6. Go into unit details and hover over the debuff it will tell you how long remains. [/quote] Does this work for immobilized heroes who have been killed? My personal gripe is that although it shows how long you are immobilized on the strategic map if you hover over a unit, this doesn't work if your hero has been killed and moved to the nearest town. I have suggested this as an improvement for the fabled UI patch. If a strategic

Couple of other things: Summons up to Air Elemental (including Skeletal Horde) are good, but after that you may wish to focus on getting Sacrifice (to solve mana issues), Blizzard (as an AI army killer) and Savant (-1 casting time, requires getting lots of spell mastery to get there, which is very helpful for Death spells). The following summons are ok, but the next really useful summons in my opinion is Summon Grave Elemental. If cast tactically this gives Death Ward for five tu

Looks interesting. May try this next, I can pretty consistently beat Ridiculous, but Insane is hard work. The other mod I might try making is setting monster movement to 2, which should make mobiles a bit more effective (both against me and the AI). Have you had any more feedback on whether XtraSavageAI (as opposed to the extra difficulty level) actually improves the AI over Ridiculous? What effect exactly does sett

[quote who="abob101" reply="1" id="3412356"]5) Bloom of Twilight/Birth of Summer should tell you what the new tile yields will be after you cast, so you don't have to save-scum in order to ensure you're getting bang for your mana.[/quote] As I understand it the yields are influenced by terrain, so if you're near woods you get Materials, near shards you get Essence, etc. But I agree it is a bit of stab in the dark for quite an expensive spell.

[quote who="deathcoy" reply="10" id="3412277"]Spells to destroy, Elemental/Summons are disposable tanks to protect your Champions/Sovereign. Am i playing it right?[/quote] Yes, pretty much. Blizzard with -1 casting time is your army killer. The Earth line is currently much better than the Fire line, but make sure you get Skeleton Horde first. Most summons are better cast Tactically; for example, a tactical Earth Elemental damages surrounding units, and its slow movement is not an

Birth of Summer/ Bloom of Twilight: "Revive the land". Creates new city sites would be helpful to state explicity. Blindness: "33% reduction to Accuracy": seems to be 25% reduction for Accuracy and Dodge. Flame Wave: "4 + 2 per flame shard". Wasn't this changed to 8 + 2 per flame shard? Summon Spells: All Summon Spells which have a Tactical form with an extra effect should state what that effect is. None of them except Summon Sentinel (which is Tactical only) and S

Booo... the text seems to imply +50%, as does the 1.5 multiplier. If that's not correct then the text needs to say +3 hitpoints. +3 hitpoints is a very different thing, much more worthwhile on large unit sizes with low hitpoints than for individual Juggernauts. My highest level ones were 141 hitpoints by the end of my last game anyway, +50 base, +30 ignore pain, +22 from level 11, +38.8 from "Health Bonus", which I believe was from Guild Grocers in Towns.

Aha, that sounds like the problem exactly. Thank you parrotmath! Hopefully this can be fixed in the next version. I want to see Juggernauts with 150+ hitpoints!