yeah playing with self imposed rules works fine for individual players, but on the other hand, there will be enough players who play the game once or twice, find an overpowering strategy, win easily and stop playing the game because it's too easy to win. imo, if the devs can improve the balance to avoid that problem, they should do so.
i've read a lot of comments about the XP splitting between champions in the same stack and the desire of some players to have champion stacks as a viable mechanic. My suggested solution to this problem is to change the "Adventurer" sovereign profession; the general idea of this profession is - i think - to be the first choice for an RPG based playstyle with focus on hero characters. So why not make this profession remove the XP split between champions in the same stack? this way,
well that fortress thing works, but it doesn't really affect the balance of the game much. by the time your cities grow to size 4, the game is usually over. you won't have level 4 (or even 5) fortresses in the early/mid game and that's the interesting part of the game. once the snowball effect really kicks in and you get to the steep part of the exponential growth curve, the game is decided - removing a portion of the global unrest has very little effect at that stage, imo.
i'm pretty sure that AI factions get some XP/turn for their heroes - they don't seem to fight monsters much, but somehow their champs are all mid-high level. wouldn't hurt to get a similar effect for the human player, too. some baseline XP per turn. and the option to increase the rate by building the adventurer guild. at least this way it would be beneficial to get more fame and unlock the heroes earlier - the longer they are around, the more free XP they get over time.
i'd rather see a change in the % values, that's the way civ 5 handled the unhappiness on larger maps and it works quite well there (large/huge maps have a lower per city unhappiness than the small maps) also, according to change log for 0.8, the administrator III trait reduces global unrest by 10% now. i guess a large empire can afford a few extra units to get some commander champs to admin III.
[quote]Administrator III trait lowers the unrest in all cities by 10% (instead of just the city the champion is in)[/quote] now that's an interesting change. will be interesting to see how this will affect the global unrest percentage balance. i never considered the administrator line worthwhile before, but with this change, it may actually become a solid choice. admin 1&2 are still a bit of a waste, though, since the guy will be out in the field farming XP for admin 3. switch
my 2 cents on weapon balance: axes (cleave) are the best weapons now. don't know if it's fair to call them overpowered, but i think they could use some limitation; very little reason to use other weapon types once you get to battle axes; maybe cleave shouldn't do full damage to all affected units spears are similar to axes. impale is a bit harder to pull off with foot soldiers; mounted spear troops with charge are very strong though, since the high movement a
When you load the save, an army of corpse spiders is selected; just press end turn to crash Note: the game (usually) doesn't crash wehn nothing (or one of my own units/cities) is selected This bug is reproducible on my machine. you can DL the zip file containing the save and the debug.err file here: http://dfiles.eu/files/accw7menb
how about an extra slider on the world setup that sets the relative abundance of mount tiles? pretty much a copy/paste of the resources slider, but only affecting either the number of wild horses/ wild wargs on the map, or the production rate of the stables/kennels (or both). "high" setting would be what we have now - virtually no restriction once you have the tech; you'll typically find a horse or warg node within less than 20 tiles of your starting spot; with high setting, mount
can't speak for "above", but my last game with hard AI/hard world difficulty, several of the AI factions lost cities to roaming monsters.
a great - i was confident that you would eventually make some official/canon version of Kulan and Carrodus. I used custom versions of them for a long time - makes me curious how far off my trait selection for the two guys is :) also looking forward to the defender overhaul. they used to be my favourite path in FE, hope you will cook up some interesting perks for them :)
i started a new game and made a warrior sov. the new tree is better than the first version, but i can think of a few things that could make it more interesting. the main trait line for damage - lethal 1-3 seems ok, but the effects are pretty weak. instead of removing letal 4 & 5, you should have removed the lowest 2 ranks (so basically you'd get 3+4+5 damage). later in the tree, another trait that adds 1 att/level would be nice; the axe/bruiser/impale/sword lines
i don't think juggs need a buff. i've always seen them as a temporary thing - when you unlock them, that's a HUGE window of opportunity that basically allows you to steamroll the map. they lose their big impact once baseline troops show up in company strength with plate armor and high powered weapons, but nothing gets even close to their power at the medium tech level that allows you to build them. if you unlock them early enough and use them recklessly, you win the game. there wi
there's probably another city outside the wildland that is too close and blocks the settlement. i had the same problem in one of my games; after i deleted a city that was pretty close to the wildland, i could settle a city inside.
i had that bug, too. my sov was in a wildland (scrapyard) when i crossed 400 fame; the new hero i picked never spawned, but was visible in the list on the left side. later in the game, i used the "call of the titans" spell to assemble my roaming champion stacks and the missing hero was also teleported to the target tile of the spell.
i don't agree with the assumption that they are unbalanced. fire is definitely the best school for tactical damage spells, that's obvious. but that doesn't make it supreme. other schools have other purposes. earth gives you awesome buffs (hammers/set in stone for city production, stoneskin/natures grace [? not sure about the name]/giant form as unit buffs, tremor and earth quake as strategic spells; water gives you slow, pandemoinum (very strong when you make it instant with the s
you realize that half of your points are invalidated by the simple fact that this game doesn't even have multiplayer options? it's a single player game - the fun comes from exploring, expanding into and exploiting an unknown randomly generated world - and eventually exterminate the other factions that compete with you (aka a 4X game). if you need a specific start for a specific focus, i don't see the big problem of regenerating a few maps - or you could tweak
i think it's mostly a shortcut to victory when you get carried away by building up and find yourself in a position where you could easily steamroll the whole map, but can't be bothered to actually do it. i've finished a few games with it. i could have won each of them easily by just making allies of everyone on the map and razing those that would refuse. marching across the whole map razing a few dozen cities takes a lot of time and is fairly boring when your troops outclass
strategic map - quickslots for strategic spells (basically the same as in tactical maps, but for frequently used spells such as lower/raise land, tremor, freeze, pillar of flame etc.) unit screen - option to remove buffs from selected unit (similar to city screen essence buffs - the govern>enchantments screen works alright, but i for one played the game for more than 100 hrs before i learned from the forum that we can remove buffs from units on that screen - i didn't know a way
i don't think the XP rate we experience now is set in stone. it's based on the difficulty level of the encounter and modified by a percentage. the devs can easily adjust the rate (and probably will do so as the beta progresses) when half the posts on the forum are about too low XP. that being said, my strategy for now is to concentrate on one character (which is usually the sov). they participate in all (or almost all) battles and eventually reach a level where they are super
regarding the wonders: even if you don't get them, it's not such a huge loss. 25% extra production and food in your main production center is nice, but the long build time is also a large opportunity cost. in the same timeframe, you could probably build up all the low tech military infrastructure and build up a small but powerful army to clear strong/deadly lairs that block your further expansion (and get some level ups for your main hero in the process) - being able to field a compet
a simple change that can make the game a bit easier: add some extra AI factions above the recommended number. the recommended number is fairly low, so the AI factions can expand a lot and become powerful. if there are some more AI on a map, they clash sooner and may also start fighting among each other more frequently. diplomacy wise, it can be helpful to get trade agreements, economic agreements and non aggression pacts as soon as you meet them (assuming at this stage of the ga
how about a spell "bureaucratification" that removes the original class of the hero and assigns them a boring desk job? (commander with admin/merchant/lore traits) you can never have too many governors - especially if the have merchant and earn you money. on a more serious note: i like the current system - but it would be helpful if we could decide whether the new hero spawns next to the sov or gets teleported to the capital. sometimes it's pretty inconvenient having them spawn in
i think the balance issue here is not so much that the shocking longbow is overpowered. the problem is that an archer hero without that item sucks. the second best bow is probably some flaming bow with 20 or something attack - which is less than half of what the shocking longbow does @ mid/late levels. so either you get lucky and get the shocking bow, or you wasted your time training your hero for archery.
i just had another occurence of that bug. this time, i was inspecting the city screen of one of my own settlements. i think it could be related to that inspection screen. maybe there is an update function call at this point that runs into some internal error and doesn't finish properly (you can change stuff on that screen such as deleting buildings or removing enchantments, so i guess it would make sense to call an update function when the dialog is closed)