Hound

[quote] Below is the system we intend to implement and we look forward to your thoughts on this: When a unit attacks another unit, that units gets to retaliate (if it can) against the unit that attacked it. Action Points = 1 + Your Combat Speed. Moving a tile uses 2 action points. Attacking and casting a spell uses 1 action point. The placement of units on a map will be based on the the composition on the units going into the batt

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="3" id="2677333"] There won't be a "tax" system per say. Instead, we need to reward players more for building up fewer, bigger cities.[/quote] My wish is that building one huge city state with surrounding forts would be a viable path for an "all magic" Sovereign. Fighting for Shards and other special magic locations is much more fitting and epic than fighting for some random city someone built. It is War of Magic and not War of the Mundane

Turns out the heroes do persist, but you need to hire them again under the "veteran" tab. I find a secondary party useful in eliminating pesky elves who are stealing your lands while Lambert presses on. The Archmage in particular since he can solo pretty much anything and rack up insane amounts of XP with his infinite golem summons. Elementalists are pretty game breaking as well.. game could use some balancing and better AI for sure. But the game itself is solid, it just needs

[quote who="ddd888"] having your own shard just near the start location makes the entire shard concept irrelevant then why just not put the shard bonus into your sovereign at start? shards shoudl be some minor random bonuses and also point of interest to fight for[/quote] In my suggestion the shards are well defended and require advanced units and/or spells to overcome. You will have to invest time and resources into getting them. They are not fo

[quote who="ddd888" reply="35" id="2672328"] Quoting Hound, reply 33 Your Ice mage could start on tundra, where ice shards would also be located. no thats definitely too much but i like the above idea of having shards in their appropriate locations so if you want to go support your initial choice its not a total random mess[/quote] How is it too much? Would you rather start somewhere completely differen

[quote who="k7avenger" reply="30" id="2671504"]I like the idea you've come up with. As it stands now, even if i wanted to be a fire mage and chose fire magic, if there is no fire shard anywhere in the neighborhood, i don't get to use the good stuff. The shard resource placement on map generation does not compliment choosing what "element" magic your sovereign uses before the map is even made. If you want to be an ice mage, (assuming an even number of shards are created of each type

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="11" id="2670044"]Another idea I've been mulling over is getting rid of gardens entirely and tweaking the engine to ensure there's a fertile land tile near starting locations.[/quote] I fully support getting rid of gardens. Food production and housing are both still a no brainer to build a.s.a.p. so I don't understand why the whole thing couldn't be automated. The only thing you actually need to choose is which city to grow larger and which ones to leave sma

[quote who="Pantasd" reply="10" id="2671483"]not all sovereigns will be mages if i put 15 to str agi and con and have only 5 int and wis iam not a mage [/quote] And when a mage sovereign raises a volcano under your capital you'll find your attack and defense ratings rather useless. It's war of magic.

Sovereigns will all be mages. Some will just fight better than others. Things will easily be balanced by having weapons and armors require higher strength or talent picks. You sacrifice some spellcasting potential to be able to fight. No penalties for armor are needed. One unit having slightly better defense hardly changes anything in the bigger scale of things.

I think the ogres should only bow down to you after you show them you are stronger than them by beating an ogre 1v1. That would also prevent the Fallen from recruiting unbalancing units early game. Why would a bunch of giants let you build your city next to them anyway. They should be more likely to bash your buildings down and eat your people on sight because food is scarce.

The current Sovereign creation does allow you to choose your elements. It just doesn't allow you to specialize in them. What it needs is a more MoM like approach where you can freely choose your focus on the elements and life or death. And hopefully arcane type of magic with mind spells and other magic that does not fit under elemental/life/death. Then, as a secondary choice, you should be able to select a type of magic to specialize in, i.e. summoning, blasting or enchanting.

I like the scrolls. This is one of the more finished looking screens: What's missing is a picture of the people of the faction you have selected. Since the factions are new and obscure, the picture would be the most important element in describing them. A northern barbarian / knight / a masked guy on a desert.. that would

I'm wondering if anything's happening on this front. Choosing between the kingdoms still feels like a choice between Men, Men, Men, Men and Men. [e digicons]:S[/e] They just look and feel so identical and the kingdom names also sound like they all are of the same european culture. It really wouldn't hurt to have some scandinavian, celtic, arabian, african or oriental or whatever influence in there to give more flavour. (And different kind of unit setups.)

If I create a fiery Sovereign with burning red hair I don't want to end up summoning Air elementals instead of Fire elementals. The choice of summoning/blasting/enchanting is secondary to the choice of elements. The Elements and Life/Death give the Sovereigns much more character and should never be randomized.

[quote who="Genetic_Strife" reply="79" id="2670210"]I'd really like to see some dual elemental spells. Those by far have always been my favorite. Wind/fire Earth/water. Anything really. It would add a lot more spice and you'd still be able to keep them simple enough to program for the AI.[/quote] Agreed, going dual elemental should be encouraged by more powerful combination spells. But perhaps the opposing elements (fire/ice and air/earth) sho

It's important to keep shards and spell knowledge completely separate. Worst case scenario: you envision a thunderous storm wizard for your Sovereign and customize his look for that, ready to call lightning from the skies... only to find out there are no Air shards anywhere the map. If shards would be required to learn spells, it would be totally up to the random map generator what kind of a spellcaster your Sovereign would become and customization would be tossed in the

I truly hope they will abandon this idea of "teching" adventuring locales. It just kills the spirit of adventuring. The adventuring path should be risky but rewarding. If there will be adventuring "techs" they should deal with making it less risky. Like a "Device mastery" tech that would deal with traps. Teching adventure could be about studying ancient maps and texts to reveal bigger quests that would not otherwise be available. Like discovering some ancient te

Let me further elaborate on the idea about the Shards: Earth Shards: located underground in the deep places of the earth, intense gravity repels weak units, only big strong units can approach Air Shards: located in the highest mountaintops, protected by strong winds, only flying units may approach Fire Shards: located in hot wastelands, protected by eternal flames, only fire resistant creatures may pass unharmed Ice Shards: locate

LAND RESTORING / DESTRUCTION I think restoring land should require essence, or it will become even less meaningful, more like an automated task. My suggestion is that spending your Essence on the land should be an investment with unpredictable but guaranteed rewards. 1) Plant a Seed of Life or Seed of Death in the land. Cost = 1 pt. of Essence. 2) The Seed starts slow

If enchantments would lower mana regen rate then the regen rate would have to be able to go negative. Otherwise you could just stack every enchantment in the book and stay at 0 regen. It would only work in a system like MoM without a Mana cap, where Mana is just another resource like gold. The MoM system is solid and functional though, I wouldn't mind having that for Elemental.

While I was scouting for a good location for a city I encountered some huts and ruins that did absolutely nothing. I guess you need to "unlock" them as an Adventure tech. Finding some adventurous locale and not being able to enter without "research" is just utterly wrong and incredibly frustrating. The whole Adventure tree is a little shaky because adventure and jumping into the unknown should be about everything but studying and researching. edit: sorry if that was off topic

Ugh. I just spent a long time getting my Archmage to level 3 just to find out only Lambert carries over to the next mission. What a waste of time. And why do they have shops with expensive equipment for Archmages if you always lose them. Do the secondary heroes ever carry over in the later stages? They did in D2. [e digicons]>:([/e]

I find the enchantment slot mechanic rather blunt. You will just max out on enchantments at all times. I'd like a more dynamic system with a trade-off that would force the player to make meaningful choices and be smart about their enchantments. General rule: if you don't need it, don't use it. My suggestion: reserve Essence for spell upkeep. Say a protective enchantment would cost 1 Essence to maintain. While it's on, your effective Essence is one point lower. When you

I'd say the quality of spells by far surpasses the need for quantity. I'd rather take 50 spells that are solid and awesome. With more quality stuff added in expansions.

I hope the Sovereigns will be able to get basic spells from any school of magic in the beginning, including some skeleton or zombie summon from death magic. Only the really powerful stuff should be left for "special" books that have to be quested. And I hope it will still be possible for magic specialists to research and "rewrite" most of the more powerful stuff.