I've posted a save here that shows the basic strategy that led me to make this complaint. It's played pretty sloppily, tbh, but still generated a winning position by 182 (there is no factor that could prevent me from winning that game). I didn't even rush my neighbor for an easy jumpstart, though I might have been forced to on a higher AI setting.
There's been some discussion regarding heroes, the item shop, armor, and general balance ( link ). Here's an example of how quickly this gets out of hand. I've pretty much won at this point, in 182, it's just a question of when. The start is slightly above optimal (usually one fewer food resource), but my play was definitely sub-par (and my sov non-optimized). Note the city spam for trade routes, and the fact that I'm
Sovereigns ignore int requirements. I don't know why, and I don't know why the requirements are so high, but that's the way it's coded.
You don't have to build anything at your farming cities but the farm. You can, and often should, but you're not forced to "drag down the already limited resources" available for the capital. Plus there are food-generating structures available via the tech tree. And farmer heroes who increase crop yield in their city. If you're running out of money, stop building stuff that requires cash upkeep (labs, studies, workshops, etc). Though if you're continually expand
Eh, just give every faction's initial city a midgame-level guardian unit (that can't move outside the city, of course). It'd stop quick kills, both by players and NPCs.
I really don't think that the problem is that heroes are too powerful, though I do agree that squads and such have a few too many requirements now. The problem is that the item shop currently allows heroes to completely freaking ignore half the game. I've tried tinkering with other strategies, but by far the best one that I return to is this: 1) Get gold. 2) Get Arcane Weapons and Arcane Armor (though iron-based equipment would also work fine - the problem isn't th
Totally agreed; and it doesn't help that elevation really messes with locational clicking. The cloth map is always accurate, but the mesh is not, and without a way to verify where you're clicking before the order is issued...
Kingdom units get stat boosts on kingdom-type land, and stat penalties on empire-type land. Visa versa for empire units. So if you're intending to fight a close battle against a faction of the opposite alignment, turning the battleground friendly might be a strong move.
Storm isn't AoE - or if it is, then it's not the spell that the OP is actually referring to. I've found that spell mildly useful when I use intelligence as a dump stat for my sovereign but I somehow acquire a bunch of air shards. Since most other combat spells have damage based on int, storm is the only one that deals reasonable damage in that situation. So yeah, it's kinda crap, but there is an extremely narrow use for it.
One of the most potentially-interesting aspects of Elemental is (supposed to be) the process of rebuilding a shattered world. Unfortunately, my experience is that the item shop, as currently implemented, allows you to bypass all of that "rebuilding" nonsense. This is quite detrimental to both the narrative experience and the balance between different gameplay mechanics. The problem is that everyone is measured in gold. Now, this works fine in the context of a massive
Mobility.
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="7" id="2843821"] I do lots of tweaking to the AI with each build but we don't publicize the specifics since AI strategies are highly confidential. For instance, in last night's build, the AI unit work should have been noticeably better.[/quote] I'd just like to say that, yes, indeed, the improvement was very noticeable. Still a ton of room for further improvement, since the AI still is a bit pioneer-happy and doesn't abuse mechanics even close to
I agree that armor, particularly heavy armor, is overpowered compared to weapons tech (save the need to pierce enemy armor). Get some decent armor, and you can romp through NPC (and often AI) armies with ease. Dodge (the benefit from light armor) is also pretty much trivial unless you're abusing Guardian Aura and/or Legendary Shields (mmm, magical tech abuse). Actually, there's a really simple way to solve magical equipment abuse. Change all costs from gold quantitie
Tactical enhancement spells (like Evade, which gives +1 Dodge rating) can stack infinitely as long as you take the time to cast them. This isn't a problem with something like Evade, but Guardian Aura (for example) gives +50% Dodge rating. Get a couple champions casting that on your main combat unit, and things get ridiculous. I had little trouble getting blasting past 300 Dodge with my Sovereign, with a couple imbued champions to spam Guardian Aura, which redu
I ran into a totally unexpected development playing the latest patch: I had fun. Nothing slapped me in the face and broke the experience. No crashes, no freezes, no performance slowdowns. The mechanic that I went into the game intending to test actually functioned as designed, and I got to enjoy rampaging around exploiting it. The AI, while still playing quite differently than I, didn't just fold like cheap cardboard. I feel like the battles that I've won again
[quote who="Frogboy" reply="35" id="2842827"] We're in feature lock down at this point. Only crash bugs are being addressed. Everything else would have to be evaluated in some future update.[/quote] If you're only fixing crashes at this point, then you might as well ship 1.1 and start on the 1.2 features. IMO, of course, but the outright crashes are very few and are much less important that the glitched mechanics and odd balance issues. I feel like it may have been
Yeah, it's definitely a bug on reload. Though I'm pretty sure that land takes longer than 4 seasons to update otherwise... In fact, I thought it was gradual. Maybe my imagination though. Needs testing.
I had this happen just now too. Unfortunately it left no crash log when I terminated the program via the task manager (the only way to escape the freeze short of hard-rebooting), and I was unable to reproduce it from the previous turn's autosave.
There are still features that do not function correctly (particularly regarding tactical combat), at least some of which have been reported since the fucking 1.0x versions of the game. So, no, I don't think this is 1.1-release-ready until you fix the obvious problems. Not if you want to prove that SD is taking quality control seriously. Plus there are still crashes, or at least freezes, still present - I'm in the process of posting about one in the support section now (edit:
For all my general pessimism, I would like to say that the ~daily beta patches are the best thing since sliced bread.
Yeah, this would be a fantastic addition once the bugs are squashed in the existing mechanics.
Assassin still seems bugged to only provide it's damage bonus in automatic combat resolution. I mention this only because it's been reported multiple times since 1.0x, still isn't fixed, and is a serious blow to one of the major options during sovereign creation.
Assassin is pretty obviously working in automatic resolution, but it doesn't seem to function in tactical combat.
[quote who="ogredpowell" reply="2" id="2841334"]Its not fun when youre kicking Kraxis's traitorous behind, and you cant fniish him off because although he cant make a metal sword, somehow all his kids have the sword of wrath.[/quote] Exactly. There is no way that the AI is actually researching and purchasing these items straight up, and it's hugely game-deforming that they cheat to get them. It's just Not Fun.
Yup. It won't even let you set research on the first turn, in my experience. It just won't admit that you have any research ability at all.