joeball123

Something that might have happened is that one or more of the other factions also researched trade at around the same time and then made a trade agreement, which places a road on the map between the capitols of the factions with the agreement. The spawning logic for this road doesn't seem to care if it passes through hostile territory, and has in some cases led to my road network connecting to the road networks of my opponents.

I support either this or buffing the Amarian and Wraith blood traits enough to make them worth considering even with the health penalty. Please don't make it another case of "if you're of race X, you can train units of type Y" - I think there are enough of those already, and one of those doesn't make much sense at all (specifically, slaves - only Quendar get slaves, regardless of the faction trait of Slave Lords. Why? On the other hand, the descriptions on the Bound Spiders and al

I'll agree that whatever is used should not be Ignys's, since that form should be possessive in English and there is nothing in that sentence to for the Ignys to possess. Either Ignys or Ignyses would be an improvement, as would coming up with some other pluralization - just not something that should be a possessive form. I suppose having the plural form differ by a single letter in the spelling (e.g., Ignys when singular, Ignes when plural) would also work, but that seems like it&#39

I think that the Summoner sovereign class would be more useful if it did at least one of the following: Gave summoned units extra defense per summoner's level (not necessarily +1 defense per level, but I wouldn't object to that level of defense boosting until I had a chance to test it - +1 defense for every other level is probably more balanced, though). Gave summoned units a summoner's level dependent level bonus (although even this is iffy, since all it

Ice Staff Enchanters get rich selling these staves to wilding shamans in the Lombard desert - n ot because they are powerful weapons, but because they keep the wielder cool and comfortable. Consider capitalizing desert, since

Hero recruitment scrolls? "Darth Vader needs YOU for the Imperial Officer Academy"?

Beguile, to the best of my knowledge, has no effect on anyone who is by themselves (or has no potential melee target other than the black widow - with careful positioning you can avoid the penalty, just like you would if you made a melee sovereign with the Clumsy trait) unless there are multiple black widow spiders (or other potential melee targets), in which case it will tend to cause individual enemies to survive longer because the damage will be more evenly spread over the opposing army ra

@mqpiffle: I hope you're not serious about +1 radius per earth shard. That could become a ridiculously coarse brush to be painting the landscape with (especially if it remains 5 mana per cast). If I had no earth shards, I'd be affecting 1 tile at a time, if I had 3 (not that uncommon on larger maps) I'd be affecting 49 tiles at a time, and so on. It might be okay if you wanted the map to become completely uniform, but it'd be unusable for anything else unless you wanted to kno

Oops, I hadn't noticed that - I thought that Henchmen came from Heroic. I also hadn't noticed that Mancers get the ability to build roads. I'll add these to the list of blood traits. I will agree that Tarth blood is great to have in the early game, but I feel that the lack of benefit beyond those first 30 or so turns leaves it in the neutral category.

I would agree with making juggernauts a faction trait, especially if Slave Lords gets changed to allow you to actually train slaves when you have the trait rather than slaves being a bonus from somewhere else (I think a hidden bonus from being Quendar). Speaking of racial traits, what do people think of those? Overview (I will put the special 'train a unit' abilities in with the racial, since I don't know of a better place for them, and since custom factions with t

In all of my past five or so games (which are on normal and have monsters set to dense), I have seen at least one dragon within 20 tiles or so of my starting position. I once found three dragons by the third turn, not to mention the lesser monsters like juggernauts and hoarder spiders and cave bears. My current game, however, has 'merely' one Fell Dragon and a Hoarder Spider lair for close monster locations that I don't want to disturb for a little while. It isn't unre

I play on normal, with monsters dense. As for why I go for monsters dense, I tried monsters rare once and out of the six lairs within 20 tiles of my city, two were bone ogres, one was a Fell Dragon, one was a bandit, one was a cave bear, and one was a juggernaut. There's not really anything I can do against that in the early game, and being unable to level heroes (or, for that matter, really start expanding your borders) hurts quite a bit. I'd rather deal with lots of monsters and run

In all honesty I think that once you even get leather armor you're usually better off taking armored units than unarmored. The increase in survivability against early weapons is significant enough that I'm willing to pay the increased production costs, whether in gildar with rushed training or time with normal production, except in the case that I just want some meatshields to keep my sovereign/champions company - then there is an advantage to faster production, since it lets my sover

I think the one that gives Quest Scrolls could be balanced out by turning inns into map features (or resources similar to monster lairs that you can't build on) and giving them a chance to gain a new quest each turn they don't have one up for offer - quest scrolls would then just allow you to accelerate this a bit by giving a guaranteed quest for 50 gold. Perhaps also do this for the Arena of the Slakhanan (unsure of spelling) - its been around since before the cataclysm and it shuts

Lord Xia brought up a good point - a lot of times the champions don't feel like they match their descriptions very well (and a lot of times these ones are 'Path of the Mage' and claim to be great warriors formerly in the service of so-and-so), and on top of that have a negative trait. I think that if a champion has a negative trait at recruitment time, he or she should get at least one extra trait above what they should have for their level for each negative trait, depending on ju

I'd kind of like it if they kept the current magical weapons and armor (and an added magical chainmail and magical leather armor set) as things which require both the Warfare research and the Magic research, and then added at least one of the following for magical armors: 1. A separate magic armor line - some form of enchanted clothing early on which gives small defense bonuses and some form or another of magical benefits, similar to the current Robe of the Aegis and the loo

I personally would like it if defeating an elemental lord gave you the ability to train (or spawn like the recruitable monsters) shrills and elementals of that type in the city where you set up the trophy. Something like: City Level Bonus Creature 1 &n

The only change that I really want to see on most of the high level champions is for them to have all the perks that they would have had if I had recruited them as level 1 champions and developed them to level 5-9 for whatever purpose/skillset that they seem to have been worked towards. As has been said, there are a few high-level champions that are great, but most of them feel like a waste of money - great, you're level 9 and have 3 traits and one level 2 magic skill. Why should I pay yo

Before the patch that re-did unit health, I was able to make units whose armor was full leather that had enough health to survive several hits from a dragon. They were relatively late-game units simply because they were 7-man groups (which at the time was the second-largest group size) so each had 100 to 200 health from the start. An army of three of these supported by a champion with heal or wellspring, even though they only had spears and and leather armor, was able to win the final battle

Pomally - unless your 0.75 damage is an average for each successful hit rather than an average over all attacks (or is an average total damage dealt per attack by the unit instead of per bow), 0.75 damage is not unreasonably outside of my estimates for spears. You'll note that my estimate was 1 damage per spear per successful hit, and I assumed that I'd miss half the time, which gives an average of 0.5 damage per attack per spear. Applying the same 50% miss rate and an assumption of a

It is sort-of possible to kite a dragon. You need to have both high initiative and a high amount of movement on your troops in order to do it, and you almost certainly will not be able to do the 'strike and run away' kind of kiting that works for melee units. What works best is to have something fast and weak to tempt the dragon into chasing it around for a while, and keep the rest of your forces scattered around the edges of the map (these troops should have ranged attacks, otherwise

@GFireflyE: the Great Library of Alexandria accumulated the books that it did by taking/copying/purchasing/seizing/stealing books that it did not have from any people who visited Alexandria, and also by making purchases or copies of texts found elsewhere. It was a unique collection of knowledge made possible at the time by a significant investment by the local government (the Pharoahs) into developing it, and also a potential cost: you could really tick visitors off if the books taken were su

Dirge of Ceresa is a spell that requires you to have taken a specific faction trait, and Contagion requires you to have both Death and Water magic at a high level. It isn't unreasonable that these spells are powerful - you have to sacrifice a customization slot that could gain you something more generally useful (Dirge of Ceresa) or you have to sink multiple level-ups into developing two schools of magic on one hero. Somewhat ironically, Ceresa is one of the sovereigns most likely to be a

I would go for well-armored or high-initiative archers as the mainstay of my army. If I go for well-armored archers, then I want to firstly cast hast on my archers and secondly spread them out so that the dragon can pick one to beat up for a while, then go on to the next. I would also try to slow the dragon after hastening my archers, but only if 1) I think there is a reasonable chance that I can slow the dragon If I go for high initiative archers, I would also include a fast,

I think that you may have missed my point. I also don't mind that World Wonders exist. What I mind is that many of the Wonders currently in the game are things that anyone would copy if they really gave the benefits associated with the wonder. A mill which is very efficient at processing food and materials? Of course I will copy it. A vault to keep my gold in, which also gives me income based on my total wealth? I'll copy that, too. A tower that acts as an air shard? Only if I 1) have