Azunai_

i disagree with the idea that champions need to be high level to be useful. mid level champions aren't whimps. even a fairly low level defender (level 4-5) can tank armies, a mid level warrior can cleave/sweep a whole line of enemies, or bladerush through the line and slaughter the archers in the background if you went that route. a low level commander can boost the damage of his troops drastically and command a high damage unit to perform a double turn, a low level mage can haste/slow/he

yeah nerfing spear damage (at least T2 and T3 spears) could also work. they came out of the great across the board nerf pretty much unscathed. perhaps reducing boar spears from 10 to 8 and pikes from 15 to 12 or something along that line. the baseline spear is just 5 strength, that's ok, but the first upgrade now doubles their attack value to 10, that may be too much. EDIT: regarding swords: i think they are fine as they are. the good thing about swords is, they are the only weapo

ok you don't like that mechanic. the alternative would be to have an uber stack of champions that level up quickly and make the whole empire building aspect of the game moot. honestly, in my opinion that's far worse. ever thought of that aspect?

some random small (?) tweak suggestions that could enhance overall gameplay: magic: - shockwave (earth magic) seems overpriced. how about making that spell more of a melee ablity? (it's melee range only, anyway). reduce mana cost drastically and perhaps (if the game engine supports that) make the damage based on the caster's attack power instead of level (maybe 50% of attack value?). this way, earth will scale better for melee champs (i think the tree is really m

ah great, the long awaited patch that finally makes the heroes "legendary" :) the tweaks to random treasure chest loot, item rarity and removed level prereqs for armor will probably resolve most of the issues with the slightly underpowered champion paths (melee specs in general). plus, i like the buffs to healing magic. sounds great. healer is my favorite mage spec and this will make them even better :)

if they didn't use up their "knowledge" (i think that's the in-game term for the tradeable tech points) then it would be 10% (or something) of the whole research they invested in civic techs. for example, they spent 2000 research on civic techs and got ~200 knowledge for trade as a side product. if they trade away that tradeable knowledge, it's gone (this explains why a more powerful Ai only has 2/3/3 - they probably traded the other points away) btw. you don't lose an

my opinion on your suggestions: - not sure about the scaling. flame dart is fine, IMO. if you want a cheap early nuke, grab aeromancy and use the lightning bolt (or whatever it's called). - mage path: i actually like them the way they are now. the repeated "evoker" traits seem a bit too much. i think there are currently 4 evoker traits, that's excessive IMO. 2-3 would be fine. - coordination: you have a point. some of the spells seem a bit oddly placed. i

i think mounted units are getting there, slowly. current game they feel rather precious. i have 3 warg nodes now, so the situation is under control, but for the most part, i had only one warg in range, so my army didn't have a lot of mounted support. i guess it wouldn't hurt to have a real gameplay reason to mix your troops (other than limited resources). mounts are still a nobrainer if you have enough nodes to outfit most of your troops. different troops sizes for mounted and foot so

well warfare knowledge gets added to your warfare research. i'm not sure how it's applied, though. i think it gets added to a random warfare tech that is currently available.

ah nice, another MadDjinn LP :) looking forward to the next episodes.

lucky is good, but not that good. 25% of baseline 60 accuracy is +15, and 25% of baseline 0 dodge is still 0. it's a nice perk when you want to play with a dodge based army (wraith blood is an obvious choice - 20 base dodge + another 20 from traits, which yields 10 free dodge from lucky). and of course, the accuracy bonus gives low your troops a little damage boost (about one extra hit every other attack). it's not such a huge deal, though. it's certainly one of the better

generally speaking, a single conclave with up to date research buildings can carry you through most of the tech tree. it will get a bit slow in the later stages, so you may want to build a few more later on. specialization is key here. research buildings (both the sage line and the study line) are top priorities. the mana buildings(herbalist/apotecary/alchemist) are nice to have, but research is more important. towns are a good option for all those mediocre tiles with no essenc

[quote quoting="post"] ... Defensive; Not sure why Shields are tied to Spears. Bronze Shield is "ok". Why isn't there a new Spear as well? Still seems an odd mix. ... [/quote] i think you don't understand that trait - the shield is tied to the spears since all of them are one handed spears which can be combined with shields. in my opinion, this is currently the best weapon trait in the game. spears are really powerful wit

yeah Parrotmath already figured that out - in the unit design xml file they are still listed with an old tag value (magicalstaff or something), but since the staffs are now broken up into two separate lines (fire/frost) the old design no longer works. apparently, the same effect applies to the "Torchbearer" henchman design (Altar)

some of the premade sovereigns were changed slightly. for example, Carrodus now has the new "cautious" trait (i think he had veteran before). and Ceresa got sovereigns bond as a new trait. obviously that trait cost 1 point, so the person who changed that apparently decided to remove the staff of souls. i think it makes sense. she's supposed to be a summoner, not a damage caster. now she can summon twice as many creatures thanks to the new trait. you can always just create a custom Ceresa

afaik, the research points you get for trading are a percentage of the points you spent on actual research (10% maybe - not sure). so if you're halfway through the civ tree, you spent maybe 2000 points worth of research, which creates about 200 tradeable civ research points. when you acquire research points from an AI, they are added to the appropriate tree. so if you buy 200 civ research, those points are added to your current civ research project.

Gandalf's build seems pretty powerful. when i make custom factions, i avoid picking more than one of the big 3 OP traits (encahnters/lucky/master scouts). there's nothing wrong with picking all 3 of them, but i think the game feels less cheesy if you don't. my last custom faction i played was a krax kingdom with defensive, enchanters, scholars, warrior caste, light plate and no ranged weapons. the sov was adept, brilliant, life 2, scholar. was great fun. enchanters

the way i see it, i'd rather have them invest their development time in other areas. it's not nice to get a start with no essence, but you can easily fix it by re-rolling the map; or you decide to play out the harder start - your choice really. can be fun to play a "harder than usual" start sometimes. afaik, it doesn't affect AI anyway. don't know about the low difficulties, but on challenging or hard, their capitals always have essences. i don't think i ever

i disagree with the "overpowered" part. the bonus accuracy is great for early game troops, since they likely won't have all the accuracy boosts from fortress training buildings, but mid/late game troops start at rather high accuracy anyway when built in fortresses, so most of the commander bonus is wasted at that point, unless you fight stuff that has a high amount of dodge. command is a great ability, but on the other hand, if that commander were a warrior, assassin or evoker mage he wou

torchbearer is the guy with the fire staff, i think. do you have the enchantment tech that unlocks fire staffs (and other items) ?

i guess it's intended. the tactician I commander thing has been posted a few tims. i think there was no dev response, so i guess it's either low priority or intended. battle cry at level 5 seemed a bit odd and quite powerful combined with the 3 passive initiative from the prereq tactician perks, but i don't think it's too overpowered.

spell resistance and spell mastery also increase. dodge only increases per level if you train units with the "acrobat" trait. the other stats aren't affected by level ups afaik.

i just realized that light plate and plate were nerfed - at least i think they were. light plate is now 22 def and plate is 32. i'm pretty sure they used to be 30 resp. 40 def. is that a new change? i'm not sure i get the reason for that. i thought this patch was supposed to make mid/late game combat a bit longer - reducing armor values kind of defeats the purpose of the weapon damage reduction?!

i think the hardest game i ever played and yet really enjoyed was Dark Souls. that game is quite brutal, but somehow i didn't mind the constant dying and re-trying. that game really manages to be hard and yet enjoyable. it's frustrating at times, but when you finally kill one of the boss creatures after 20 or more wipes, it's really rewarding. i highly recommend that game to everyone who hasn't played it yet. other hard games i liked were the old X-Com and it's sequel Terr

did you guys have crystal available? i think units don't show up in the list if you don't have the resource you need to produce them (which apparently changed with the new .85 patch, they are supposed to be greyed out now instead of hidden, i think)