Mistwraithe

I agree. I've stopped playing FE actually because of a combination of the AI playing by different rules (in many, many ways) and the AI only providing a challenge on very high difficulty levels where it is more a case of the AI having ridiculous advantages rather than being any good. Both problems are potentially different sides of the same coin: the AI needs a lot more work so that it can at least appear to play by the same rules we do (internally of course it can and probably sh

He has a point though. I think the biggest problem here is that the AI can't adapt and deal with it (or do the same), a lesser problem is that the strategy is a bit too effective.

I seriously wonder about Stardock's testing team at times. I mean how many things are there to test with a change that is described as "Tireless March can only be cast on one unit at a time"? For example: * If I have Tireless March cast on a unit already can I cast it again? (should be no) * If I then cancel Tireless March on the unit then can I cast it again? (should be yes) * If the unit with Tireless March on it dies then can I cast it again? (should be

I strongly dislike the 9 cap. A large part of the fun of exploring is the excitement (or just hope) of running into the occasional really nice places to settle. The cap kills that completely and makes everything boring and similar.

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="14" id="3327298"]Didn't Brian Reynold's just leave Zynga too? He ain't got shit to do, he probably needs a job, get him working on Alpha Centauri 2 and then just change the name so nobody get's sued.[/quote] Bring it!

Excellent news about Soren. I really hope Kael and Frogboy have a good talk with Soren about how to tighten up the strategic game in FE/LH. IMO Civ 4 is the gold standard on how to balance the various strategic trade offs, particularly expansion vs vertical growth and military vs economy (not quite as dominant at the latter but still excellent).

[quote who="Plutonium239" reply="31" id="3324144"]Having new cities be a burden until they develop past the break even point is actually the same as an economic cost to building pioneers. It's a flat cost differing only in whether you pay up front or get the new city as a loan that you have to pay off. An ever expanding empire is still always better. More cities are still always better. It is only the rate of expansion that must be managed.[/quote] I see your point. There are some

You28 has the correct answer. You fix city spam by making young (ie small) settlements a significant burden on your empire, ala Civ 4. Settlers should still be expensive enough (probably just in labour time) that you are a bit wary about risking them as scouts but the main cost should be in the actual settlements. This also has the byproduct of making outposts viable again whereas any system which has expansion cost front loaded into settlers kills off outposts.

Agreed, high level heroes are sub-par in many ways so combined with their high cost it only makes sense to buy most of them if you have already won (and therefore don't need to spend your resources sensibly).

Yes, these sorts of bugs show things are poorly coded. Just like the ability for the AI to instantly raze captured settlements while the player has to wait 5 turns. All these checks should be going through common code. Mmilleder called it a world manager, I think it would probably be multiple different managers and rules engines but the concept is bang on, the logic should be centralised in some fashion and called by both the AI and player UI. Instead it appears the logic is coded separately

Beaten to the punch by Alstein [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] Total Annihilation is the second best RTS ever made and was my firm favourite until I found Kohan: Ahriman's Gift. So Frogboy's point is still a good one ;-)

[quote who="bbr91" reply="61" id="3317297"] Quoting jwdR1, reply 59Yes, you can prevent this by running offline, but if you want to see what is new or what mods are available, you have to log in. Actually if you right-click any game and go to Properties -> Updates you can select to not update that game. I don't own Skyrim, but for every game I own I can do that and I don't have to be offline.[/quote] Not true. Some games force updates even if you say you don

Great post and I agree with many of the ideas. The UI could benefit from a lot of improvements, particularly anything that saves time and makes the game faster to play.

Almost all of this sounds great. My only concern is the new unrest mechanic based on the number of cities. This seems very much like the Civ3 method of penalizing expansion which I found the opposite of fun. In Civ3 the penalties were sufficient that distant expansion was likely to always be a losing proposition no matter how much you tried to overcome the corruption/unrest. The Civ4 approach was far superior because it hit the player with significant short term gold penalties (and th

Exactly Kamamura. They hacked it rather than coding it properly. Sounds like someone added code directly to the raze button rather than creating (or enhancing) a CanRaze function and making sure that everywhere which wants to raze a city calls it. Presumably the same goes for CanSettle and a variety of other functions where the AI plainly doesn't play by the same rules as the player.

I would be happy with either heading closer to MoM 2 or evolving FE further. FE is a good game, it just isn't the great game it could be yet. I think that if enough effort is put into getting the tension between the big strategic choices right (eg expansion vs vertical growth, economic vs military focus, etc) from the start then the next iteration could be the biz!

I also agree that the population needs to come from the city building the pioneer. Also outposts need to not cost population. Assuming of course the pop cost mechanic is staying at all.

[quote who="sjaminei" reply="10" id="3313844"]Wildlands should each have a site like that to make conquering them more rewarding. The heads suck aside from that swamp one (+5hp for trained units) They shouldn't be common, so wildlands and maybe 1-2 random spawned ones?[/quote] Agreed. Wildlands rewards always need to seem impressive, not just some 4/3/1 site which is nice but hardly worth getting excited about mid/late game when you are clearing out wildlands.

Bang on the money, excellent post Diarch, [e digicons]k1[/e] Several replies have stated that the 30 pop cost was necessary because expansion was too powerful and needed to be nerfed. That is a fallacious argument. Yes, early expansion needed to be nerfed, but 30 pop cost was just one way of doing it. There are other alternatives that I think would be better. This is a really difficult subject, just look at how both Civ 3 and Civ 5 stuffed expansion balance u

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="8" id="3307374"] Quoting Heavenfall: 1) When a city gets attacked twice in one turn, sometimes it will lack all its militia defense the second time around. On #1 that is by design.[/quote] Like others I have to say I don't see how this can possibly be by design unless there is some really subtle rule to it that no one has pointed out.

[quote who="NaytchSG" reply="39" id="3307884"]3) More unit traits in tech tree, more ways for units to earn bonus traits.... 4) City levels are a great idea. The essence thing is a great idea. Let a city gain +1 essence at levels 4 and 5 to encourage verticality... 5) Clean up the loose ends already in the game... Etc[/quote] Good post NaytchSG, I like the ideas.

I agree totally with OP and have in the past made a very similar post myself. At least it is much improved over how it used to be (you used to be unable to settle the entire countryside around the city again if it was destroyed!) but it is still a fairly excessive penalty.

Not sure if I like the idea of pioneers costing population. Maybe it could work. However I do know that the change would make building outposts with pioneers very expensive. You can't afford 30 pop for an outpost until late game. So if you are making this change you need a cheaper unit which can build outposts (much like settlers vs workers in Civilization to be honest, except I would be happy with the worker disappearing when it makes an outpost).

[quote who="Kongdej" reply="7" id="3307361"]1: Path-finding: 2: User Interface: 3: Movement Points: 4: Information boxes: 5: Auto Resolve, and Auto Combat:[/quote] Kongdej's list is a very good starting point which I agree with entirely. My own list is only slightly different: 1. Pathfinding is unreliable. Exiting cities will often take the wrong exiting square (eg not exiting onto the road), rivers confuse it and there are some areas of maps where path

Good point Sanati. Just confirms the overall opinion though which is the auto-resolve needs major, major work.