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[quote]In MoM, each spell school had direct damage spells, and they were all different. Even though chaos magic had many different direct damage spells (from the top of my head: lightening bolt, fire bolt, fire ball, doom bolt), they each had a unique effect to make them better at specific niches. Lightening is armor peircing, so I use it against heavily armored units, while fireball does its damage to each unit in a stack, making it superior against groups.[/quote] This is exactly th

Ah, yes, that too. Apologies.

[quote]Sovereigns should be able to buy for a small starting gold/points pool, maybe from part of the starting gold of your faction or a separate pool, with this gold being useable eitheir for normal weapons and armors (for the warrior type) or for some other items (scouting package for your adventurer sovereign, some starting bonus ressources for the empire build[/quote] I like this a lot. Have a small "starting equipment" gold pool, which must be spent (or lost) in Sovereign d

[quote] If you could win that battle or inflict serious damage, there is likely a very serious imbalance left in the game. (Casters being able to empty out a mana pool on the first turn comes to mind) [/quote] Not at all. The game ignores Essence and Intelligence values in combat calculations, and undervalues ranged units. I just lost the game I was playing because my combat strength 216 stack (including two casters with low attack/defense values but high Essence

No, the issue is that the order in which the party is placed on the strategic map determines their initial placement on the tactical map (like in HOMM), but its a PITA to manaully change the strategic map party ordering (unlike in HOMM).

It is very frustrating when for example some of my units are attacked by an army that has a larger combat value, and I am forced to auto-combat the results even when I could win (or inflict significant casualties on the enemy) if I played the fight manually. It is not fun for this option to be arbitrarily withheld from the player. If the idea was to make multiplayer go faster, then add this as an option for multiplayer only ("force autocombat for uneven strength battles").

A better alternative; have a tactics phase where players get to choose the formation of their units by placing them within a rectangular starting zone before combat starts (and without seeing how their opponent is placed). Like Total War games, or from Tactics skill in HOMM.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I would hate being screwed by the randomness of the mapscript because I am playing a Fire mage and the only Fire shard is on the other side of the world from my start position, whereas other powers get good spells because their magic types happen to be closer to them. This kind of "surprise" isn't fun.

Another thought on Summons: make summons relatively weaker, but boost them with Magic tech researches. I have no problem with Summons substituting for a regular army IF doing so comes requires you to pursue magic techs rather than warfare techs. As for node requirements: I think requiring summons to have an Elemental Shard would require a system where Shards are not of a particular type, and where the player (when building a shrine on them) then gets to choose what type of shr

Why two rings? Gameplay, balance, and clutter reduction. Most of the abilities for a hero should come from their stats, not from magic items. You shouldn't just be able to boost a hero to endless heights by weighing them down with basic level magic items. If you want a bigger boost, you should have to research a magic tech that lets you get a superior item. Otherwise, all you ever need is 1-2 basic magic techs, and you can get all the magic items you need

[quote] I hate that "You don't have a high enough Adventuring level to see this location" pop-up. They shouldn't display if I cannot use them. [/quote] I disagree. Seeing quests you can't reach get gives you a good incentive to pursue adventuring techs. I think what's lame is the opposite; if you have no idea if getting a new adventure tech will actually reveal any useable adventure options. [quote]i vote for you being able to take on all quests, regardless of leve

There was a thread somewhere with instructions on how to make maps arbitrarily large, so only your memory space is the limit.

I think we'd be better off limiting to two rings, 1 amulet, 1 pack for both heroes and built units. Together with either 2 handed weapon or shield AND arm-bands. Some kind of simplified paper-doll model might be required. I see no reason for rings to be superior to amulets. LotR isn't the only fantasy source.

I'm not sure that having even the meanest wizard able to cast twice per turn really gets at the core desire of making it harder to deplete your entire mana pool in a turn or two, or making the ability of the attacker to go first giving massive alpha strike capability. I would rather have tactical spells be slightly more powerful, but only able to cast once per turn. Another thing that needs to be factored into the calculus here is the opportunity cost of the mana. If you

[quote] I'm especially a fan of how master of magic did it (ie 6 soldiers in a unit has 6 times x attacks, whatever x weapon is). This really is key... the current method of just adding it all together doesnt seem balanced currently. [/quote] Yes!!! This would make armor actually meaningful.

[quote] Actually ... Max HP = Contitution + (Con/5)*level is a possibility. Alternatively Max HP could = starting Constitution + (Con/5)*level ... [/quote] Whats the difference? Why should effects that increase your Con only boost your con per level, and not your base con? It shouldn't matter if I have con 13 when I start or if I have con 10 when I start and then get +3 from a levelup. There should be no distinction b

A simple way for class improvements; have them auto-acquire an upgrade (of your choice) at say level 6 and level 10.

I find that the game has extreme sensivity to start-location variables, in particular to gold mines. I recommend that the map script be less sensitive to this; either every civ should start with a gold mine, or none should. Otherwise, its the difference between +1 income or +6. Thats not really very fair. Start position usually matters for these kinds of games, but not quite to this extent.

[quote]8. Don't agree on the shop UI. We like it. Not changing[/quote] Why cant' we have the same UI as the Design unit screen? So we can select weapon, armor (by body area), items from separate tabs? The list gets far too long in the late game. Way too many items. Also, it was very convenient to be able to buy "full set of leather" or "full set of chain", having to do it piecemeal is frustrating; it takes like 8 clicks to buy a set of leather armor for a

"Champions" are the inventors, merchants, farmers, adventurers, assassins, sages etc. Yeah, it wasn't obvious to me at first either. You can't make your normal military troops that you design into spellcasters.

5? When you build your first town, you are beginning your Kingdom or Empire. The whole game is creating your Kingdom (if you're one of the Kingdom factions) or Empire (if you're one of the Imperial factions). Though.... the factions need a lot more flavor and differentiation, they are still too vanilla. It needs to feel different if I'm playing against a trade-based magocracy than if I'm playing vs slave labor plantations with hordes of cheap conscripts. Tw

Maybe there should be automatic "name" promotions at specific levels; at level 6 and level 10 you gain a title upgrade. And any hero can get a Title upgrade, with some branching options and maybe stat requirements; like Paladin requires Charisma 14 and Strength 14, Mage requires Int and Wis 14, etc. Its lame that even mighty wizards or champions are still "farmer" or "merchant" in the late game. This still doesn't work for administrator heros alone; for that, there nee

[quote] 1. Essence and HP should automatically rise at each level up 2. These "points" gained by Adventurer tech can be used on Con, Dex, Str, Int, Wis, or Char [/quote] This would be fine as long as Int/Wis properly boost magic; so a low int/wis character can't spend all their points on physical stats but still spend all their mana points on Summon and Enchantment spells that are just as effective as dedicated casters. [quote]better prices in stores[/quote]</p

Another Mom thing I would like to see is spell specialization. I don't like how in the current build all the Sovreigns have all 4 elements, and elements are very cheap to buy in terms of points (a single attribute point). I think Sovs would be much more interesting if they were required to specialize in magic types. So, one game I play a Fire Mage with Enchantment. Another game I play a Life and Earth wizard. And these have different playstyles; one is about da

I would have the effect of Int vary by creature type, and magic type. So fire creatures might tend to have boosted attack, earth boosted health/defense, air boosted combat speed, ice some kind of utility effect (eg Int% chance that the enemy gets frozen in place for a turn).