Raiddinn

The math analysis from JustaMo sounds right in that I don't think it is a really great idea to build cities after about 6. Maybe if you are playing on really large maps it might make sense, but still after that I would rather just conquer an AI city than build my own city. I wouldn't make any new city after that unless it had serious strategic value, like adding a town if my cities can't grow or adding a fortress to block a certain pass. I wouldn't even rea

In general, I think most things that are army or unit specific say so. If armorer or scholar don't say they are limited to current army or if they are self only you can probably safely assume they are universal. I use Armorer most of the time and I just assume it is universal. It wouldn't make sense for scholar to be anything other than universal.

In general, I find the relative strength to be what 90% of declaring war is based on. I almost never have the AI declare war on me without first letting me know that it thinks it is superior to me by asking me for tribute. If that doesn't happen, I assume it is because I have an unusual and large penalty like if I raze a lot of enemy cities or it is because they were paid off by another AI to attack me. I don't fully understand why to trade or not trade for researc

Monsters move first is fine. From the player's perspective that is how it already works anyway.

I would never go in trying to aim for a certain number of cities. For me, once I have the basics of one city of each type covered things become a lot more about controlling key areas to allow myself easy movement and to deny the same to the AIs. I will put a Fortress or three down in key areas and snake to completely prevent passage through by the AIs once I have one of each city, but I am not doing that for its effect on my own economy, just to keep AIs contained. Somet

What defenders really need is taunt, a passive that forces everything in melee range to attack it. As far as general traits go, I do find some value in getting the two healing skills. I definitely like First Aid as a heal more powerful than the spell for free every few turns. Though I think it would be much cooler if it was re-imagined as a spell that gave a unit +5 defense in addition to the healing. Sometimes I also have used the 2 initiative traits as well, but

I feel like I shouldn't have to stand around with the defender passing turns all the time. Maybe it needs to have guard strike innate or something. I know I wasn't standing around still all the time with them in FE and they were still ultra survivable apparently without the extra defense bonuses. However, I played the game I said I would. Commander lower track main hero, got a defender henchman early on and just sat around passing turns with it every combat.

I think you are making defenders sound a whole lot better early game than they actually are. In FE, they used to be able to hold their own every step from turn 1 to turn 300. You could make your first hero into one and it would be useful from the bear killing time all the way up to the Waerloga killing time. In LH, they are as likely as not to die in both the early game and the late game. They aren't rock solid early and they aren't rock solid late either.

Defenders in FE were hands down the best tanks, especially if your whole front line were defenders. They hard countered every difficult enemy in the game. Overpower did nothing, criticals did nothing, dragon breath did nothing, etc all by like level 8. One time I had dodge up to the 180s using their stacking bonuses. Most of the time, I would pretty much never make front line units that weren't defenders because of that. &nbs

Fireball is still 1 and Horrific Wail is still 2. I don't know which spells you are talking about, but these major ones stayed the same, and by that I mean before the -1 cast time. In LH, mages using these spells do tons more damage than the FE mages using these spells and these were arguably the two most powerful in the game in FE. Note also, these spells didn't get a damage nerf at the same time everything got a HP nerf, that widens the gap by itself. Also,

@Joeball - I meant Knowledge, not Potential. The one that mages get that others don't. That should be tradeable just fine for Rescue which Defenders get that others don't. BTW, it's nice that you tried to give a thorough analysis of how rescue would possibly play out on a mage, but you are kinda missing the point that you yourself are making. Mages are strong enough as it is, they don't really need to be any stronger. If they can't optimally u

If you have 5 Onyx Thrones, the game was over 5 hours ago anyway. That isn't really be relevant to serious discussions.

I am going to blame it on the laptop processor. Works just fine on a 3570k + 6850.

Just do what I do and turn off the spell victory condition. Then the decision making process becomes much easier.

Funny, since the defender was nerfed moving from FE to LH. Dodge used to be 2/3/4 and now its just 2/2/2. Shield Wall used to be something you could get early on when it mattered most, now it's at the very end of the tree. It used to have +exp, but that was moved to commander instead. Mages which were already the most powerful were made even better with -1 cast time which, btw, is far earlier in the tree than shield wall is. Unfortunately, the move

I am more interested to know about the beer resource. Is it made from the brewery upgrade in towns? One every 15 turns or something? What does it do? Reduce empire wide unrest by 1? Sounds like an awesome resource the way I am imagining it. Kinda late in the tech tree and you would need a lot of towns to go ICS with it.

If you are like me, don't expect your problem to be sorted out quickly.

I don't think XP can even use 16 GBs of RAM, or even 8 for that matter. XP 64 is horrible and that is the only version that is going to get you access to more than 3.5 GBs. The 32 bit OSs can't do more than 3.5 GBs. Definitely don't try to use 16 GBs of RAM in a 32 bit OS. Windows 7 x64 or Windows 8 x64 are going to be able to use 16 GBs, but the only reason to ever have more than 8 is if you are doing high end audio or video editing. &nbsp

An angel is definitely not a demon, just sayin.

Internet Explorer is also not my default browser and I also crashed during activation so many times it gave me the same error. I put in a ticket and it hasn't been responded to.

Binding works fine for me for both Empire and Kingdom. Just doesn't give anything in Life Shrines.

Easy to reproduce, I have done it over and over and over now. I apologize if this has been reported elsewhere already. I looked and didn't see it anywhere. Emergent Gameplay - I was trying to see how high I could get my gold to go. Conditions - I started a tiny map with 4 players. Defeated all the other players until there was just one AI left and that AI had only an army and no cities. I conquered all the cities from t