merlinme

Incidentally if you're worried about summons not doing damage in the late game, although I wouldn't particularly recommend it because the Pyre of Man is so spectacularly useless, if you go down the fire route you can get Fire Elementals, which are quite powerful and will do fire damage, which will ignore armour. Earth elementals do physical damage, which on top of how slow they are makes them pretty useless in the late game, except perhaps for tactically summoning a tank

I'm not aware of troops getting extra traits at higher levels that they didn't have when they were first created. Either I just never noticed, or what you may have seen is later trained troops being better than earlier trained troops because you built more troop enhancing buildings in your fortress, or because you cast one of the troop enhancing spells on your city.

Your suggestions are fine if I thought the summoning line needed boosting, but I don't think it does, really. Summons do get somewhat more powerful because they get more levels as part of the summoning path. Summoned lightbringers and skeleton horde are useful even at the end of the game, for distracting the AI from your trained troops. The summons between Air Elemental and Grave Elemental are less useful, but I do cast them occasionally. In terms of winning the game

You can move a city from +1 growth to +3 growth as it approaches its limit, which will move you up a city level signficantly faster. I can't be bothered with the micro management and I don't like using exploits anyway. I will farm a city for pioneers, which works fine. Personally I think that exploit pales into insignificance in comparison to casting Cull the Weak on Summon Skeleton Horde. That really can win you the game. It would also be easy to fix if Cull the Weak was

[quote]- Which race should I take? (I believe humans are best with their henchmen) - Which traits should the sovereign learn? (As mage I take the one with 25 % more accuracy and avoidance, 10 % more initiative, the staff with the +3 mana/kill, water, hard with +1 life and poison resistance, 2 mana per round, + 25 % spell damage) - Starting strategy?? [/quote] Part of the fun of the game is that there are a very large number of workable strategies, although some work faster t

I always train my troops in fortresses unless there is no other option (e.g. I don't have a spare fortress). It's just more efficient because of the reduced training time and the troop buffs. Having said that a Conclave with all the troop buffs is a reasonable backup if you need to train more units than you have fortresses. But in answer to your question, I would get on with training my first troop in my fortress. The only quibble I'd make is that I might consider building fo

No Mage heroes certainly makes it more challenging. You could try playing one of the weaker factions- Tarth seems the weakest to me by some distance. I don't really understand why you don't up the difficulty level, to be honest. Raise the difficulty level two notches and things will definitely get harder. Civilization doesn't provide a significant challenge to a decent human player without cheats, so I don't know why people expect this game to.

[quote who="Fezziwig" reply="9" id="3397626"]Why would I even spend the time going down the entire summoning line so I can potentially summon one Death Elemental--perhaps the most useful of the late game summons--when the "direct damage" mage tree provides for lots of bonus damage, bonus spellmastery, mana reductions, etc.? I hope we all agree something needs to be changed here?[/quote] Well, not really, no. The summoning line is arguably less powerful right at the end of the gam

[quote who="McBeef" reply="8" id="3397406"]2. I noticed that later in the game I'm not able to build wealth or mana, etc in many cities even I possess the technology. (I mean the actual build option, not that the city is incapable of generating money, mana, etc).[/quote] Are these cities you've captured from the AI? If so, I've seen that bug also.

Ice elementals (automatically slow attacked enemy units) and air elementals (awesome initative, can knock over units) are great army boosters early and mid game. What most people miss about summoned units in the late game is that it's much more effective to summon them tactically. This is mainly because it gives you an extra unit in a full stack, but there are other reasons: 1) Summon them where you want on the map, e.g. next to the enemy's ranged units

I have previously suggested that the AI should be given "standard class path" picks so that it makes better use of its heroes. For whatever reason this wasn't done in 1.2 and 1.3. I don't really know why, it seemed like a fairly easy win to me, but maybe it's more complicated that it looks. Possibly the framework doesn't exist, so Stardock would have to go away and write it? I think it would be worthwhile for them to do so though, especially if the "standard paths" could be mo

joeball123 has provided very comprehensive answers, as always, but a few specific points: 2. The main effect I'm aware of is that you get more hitpoints. This effect can be quite dramatic, high level units can have 50% more hitpoints than rookie units. This is very useful in itself, but also because for multiple figure units this effectively increases the damage they do (it takes them longer to lose a figure). 3. Re: Defense, the only thing I'd add is t

I recently played a Kraxis game on high difficulty. I generally don't worry too much about which victory to aim for; all of them are achievable if you become powerful enough. As N1ghthavvk notes, the quest victory assumes you can get access to that quest, but apart from that it's more or less a matter of taste and how a particular game goes. <

[quote who="Fallenchar" reply="7" id="3391366"]on higher levels, you do have to crush the AI into the dust[/quote] The AI will generally surrender to me if I demand it and it only has one city left. I play on Ridiculous with other settings default. I think I've had it surrender to me with two or three (small) cities left, but I wouldn't absolutely swear it. I assume it depends on relative power level; by that stage I've generally taken the AI's capital and best cities

As stated by Frogboy in other threads, https://forums.elementalgame.com/448183/page/1/#3395243 , mobile monsters do not treat the AI players and the human player the same on levels above Challenging. In other words, the human will get attacked more than the AI on higher difficulties. Apparently lair monsters will however cheerfully ignore AI and human cities which are more than one tile away, and monsters in

Yeah, bearing in mind the struggle to get the main part of the game (i.e. warfare, magic and questing) working, it's unsurprising the diplomacy side is correctly underdeveloped. Stardock have explicitly stated it's one of the things they want to rework in the next two signficant releases though.

That makes some sense, thanks for the explanation, Frogboy. I think the example where I found it a bit disconcerting was with spawned monsters; when my city ZOC expanded over the lair I was not attacked immediately. However I think the first group of monsters spawned headed straight for my city, although that's probably fair enough on Ridiculous. Is it correct to say then that mobile monsters are more likely to target the player on higher difficulty levels?

The other possibility that springs to mind is that one of you demanded tribute, which if accepted creates a truce.

Thanks. There was a bug (which should now have been fixed) where monsters were unable to find a path to targets one tile away from them. This might explain some of the behaviour seen in the earlier threads. However it wouldn't explain what Ericridge says he's seeing in 1.3. Personally I accept that (certainly on high difficulty levels) the AI can get away with stuff I can't, and just get on with it, but I understand some people might find it annoying. Especially if it'

Very comprehensive list, you've clearly thought about it a lot. I agree the applying of movement bonuses is quirky, to say the least. I've also find it irritating that you effectively lose movement if you start in a a city and have Tireless March applied. Although I more or less agree about splitting a high movement unit from a low movement stack, really it should be done on a percentage basis; if you've used half the movement of a low movement stack, if you now split off a h

As a matter of curiosity, does anyone know how monsters treat players differently above Challenging world difficulty (as stated by Frogboy)? Do they attack the player but not AIs, or is it more complicated than that? I play on Ridiculous and I do find it a bit disconcerting when my town expands over a lair and the monsters head straight for my town, whereas the AI seems to be able to survive with lairs all over the place. It's not stopped me playing the game though, and

[quote who="abob101" reply="21" id="3394320"]This seems to happen regardless of the tag.... even if you crank it right up, no summons.[/quote] I agree, the fact that tactical summons seem to never happen, even after modding, suggests that it is at least possible there's a bug involved. Either that or the priority tag does not work as people expect.

If you wanted to make a formula out of what the best spell to cast in a particular situation was you could probably come up with something based on hitpoints, attack, defence and initiative. So a damage spell is better the more damage is done to higher attack, defence and initiative units. For non damage spells, a Haste spell which boosts initiative by 50% gives you 50% of that unit's value, a Slow spell which decreases initiative by 50% but has a 50% chance to be resisted gives

I've got a city to level 5 a few times, generally by capturing an AI level 4 Town which has Slums. I didn't until I started playing on Ridiculous with the improved AI though, I agree it's not really necessary to win, and certainly not something I particularly aim for.

I agree with others, one of the main advantages of tactical summons is the way it increases the total size of your army, with all the implications that has for swarming etc., and also because it reduces the damage your permanent units take, increasing their survivability and chance of going up levels. Earlier in the game I summon units strategically because in most circumstances that saves mana, and it saves you a tactical turn with your spellcaster, but certainly when you have a full stack w