BewareTheBarnacleGoose

I think it could be cool. Im of the thought that more options for the player is always better. But shifting political ideology made a little more sense with Alpha Centauri (which did not actually have limits on how often you could change policy, just a "social upheaval" cost in credits) because factions were divided by social agenda rather than race. I actually laughed when I read "environmental policy" in your post- imagining Magnar's pro-global warming platform,

[quote who="MisterAedan" reply="5" id="3176692"]I've seen this too (playing on Challenging) - ALL the AI sovereigns get both the Warrior and Assassin paths (as early as level 4 in one case), in every game, as reliably as them all having more leather greaves than they could ever need. I've seen the multiple strength thing too, but not as reliably. It's always these two paths too, even for mage characters like Procipinee and Ceresa. Quoting BewareTheBarnacleGoose, r

I've been playing on expert because I found challenging easy. But expert has proven too hard! I've been close to winning twice, but both savegames got bugged, so I had to give up. Not sure if Im being a sore looser, but it does seem that the difficulty curve between challenging and expert is quite steep! I think I'll go back to challenging until my skills improve. I expect I'll eventually be able to master expert, but Im not sure If I'll be able to advance

[quote who="Tibor2000" reply="1" id="3177008"]From previous posts certain buildings further reduce the cost to hire champions. [/quote] Really? Which ones?

Not sure if this is what you are seeing, but some champions have a path trait as their starting trait, and can still pick a new one at level 4. For example, Warlord Vega starts with path of the warrior. And yes, two traits are really nice!

Does anybody use scions? They seem awfully far down the tech tree for being pretty meh. You pay a lot for potential, but have almost no way to capitalize on it, since they can't survive any lategame battles until they hit level 10 or so, but can't gain levels without entering battle (unless you want to just leave them the city with your arena and war temple, so they can take the rest of the game to gain 2 levels). Also, they seem to be bugged- if you have a command post,

[quote who="Gorde" reply="2" id="3175850"]I agree with Lin04, in that there's very little room for merchant-building in this ravaged world--this is simply not the game to be strategizing about trade routes and potential customers. [/quote] Except for that fact that you can build merchants, farmer's markets, and the merchantcross bazaar (which has flavor text about merchants coming from far and wide). And that Kingdom ideology is about rebuilding the world. How about we

On the champion-magic issue: Can we also have champions with better back-stories? I know you mostly only look at them once, and a few of them are good, but most of the backgrounds boil down to "I fight for money", or "I like to kill good/bad/any things". To me, the come off as average schmucks, and the fact that these guys have magic further dilutes it for your sovereign. As others have said, it's incongruous enough that your sovereign leads a kingdom/empire

[quote who="Tuidjy" reply="22" id="3172972"]In my book, if I have to cloud walk for 80 mana or pay an extra 30 mana to nail someone with a Tremor, I've screwed up. [/quote] I agree that using tactical spells usually means "oh no, I forgot my defenses!", but monolith+ cloud walk is a pretty potent strategy- just wait till your enemy's army is on the march, swoop your ass-kicking/bubble-gum-chewing sovereign into the friendly culture space you just created,

[quote who="Tuidjy" reply="17" id="3172155"]The path tomes from enchanter are nice, but they're not its main strength. The arcane monolith is what makes it shine in my book. The ability to clear the enemy's outposts and place your own on the same turn. The ability to stick a monolith on top of fertile land, and tell neutral pioneers to take a hike. The ability to stick a monolith on a choke point, and deny passage.[/quote] Not to mention using them with

I don't think it's a bug. When you trade tech points, you don't actually give anything away. You're just comparing notes. Reslon is offering to show you their notes on magic to see yours.

I've had another bug with the master quest- after I clear the first gate, and Im told to "sleep on it" (apparently for a whole season!) the camp spawns INSIDE the gate. This has happened in 3 different games. However, I was able to get around it (and a large part of the quest) by simply kicking a hero out of my army, who passed through the gate as he ran to a new square. This caused the gate to disappear, so I sent my sovereign in, which immediately triggered a one-on-one duel (

I've hesitated to use Master Scouts, seems not only overpowered (free scout trait equivalent would have been fine), but it also ruins the early game atmosphere of the world being an inhospitable place. So I have avoided Tarth, and as I said above, I don't like custom factions either. So I don't think that either will be part of my strategy, but thanks for putting that out there. So where does that leave me? What about early research targets? Is there anything that c

Thanks, that seems like sound advice! Two more questions- what's a good benchmark for expansion? As in, what's "par" season-wise for building a second city? A third? Also, for my first city, should I go for materials or grain? It would seem like materials are more important early on, but I don't really understand the mechanics of population- how much does it contribute to production/research?

Hi all! I've been playing the beta for about 2 weeks now. My first games on normal and challenging were a breeze. Now Im playing on expert and losing every time, so I clearly still dont really know what im doing. As a result, my faction power rating (or whatever the number next to my faction name in the upper right corner is) is much lower than my adversaries, usually to the tune of 4x lower. But this was true on the lower difficulties as well, yet didn't seem to mean anything. S