malekith

Increasing the minimum city spacing is only a half-measure, in my opinion, that addresses the symptoms without getting at the disease. One of the problems for me is the decision making aspect. Namely, if I have room for a new city, it is *always* in my best interest to build that city; no thinking involved. Increasing spacing requirements reduces the number of times I need to hit the pioneer button, but it doesn't make me think about it any more. Expansion needs t

[quote who="Bellack" reply="51" id="2770415"] I disagree Cities chould not be difficult to create. They are a tactical tool to be used to block opponets as well as create units and assiste in other civilitation development. [/quote] Nobody disagrees they are a great tactical tool. The problem, though, is that your tactical tool can have a useful economic impact as well. Your wall of 5 tactically placed cities also happen to produce 5 of every resource.

[quote who="Raven X" reply="32" id="2770279"]Honestly, I haven't paid enough attention to notice what the Tax Income is, but 1 seems a bit low. [/quote] In the currently released build, there is 0 tax income. The only income sources are merchant champions, gold mines, the 1-gildar building, and the 7-gildar palace... oh, and monster hunting. The main benefit of city spamming I see is that it allows you to make up for a poor resource draw. Don't have any libraries?

[quote who="Revenooer" reply="18" id="2768785"]I would really like to sit down with one of you who find the game so appalingly easy to beat. I have used some of the tips I have gotten here (thanks!) but am still struggling. ... I am beginning to wonder if the only way to beat the AI is to use exploits. [/quote] You waited a long time to build your second settlement. Land is power. Start a pioneer as soon as your first city hits 1 population (2nd turn)

The main trading exploit I've noticed is the valuation of Diplomatic Cpital varying depending on your peace/war stance. Usually the difference is a couple orders of magnitude. It's led to exchanges like this: I see my opponent has 1000 gildar I declare war He values a peace treaty at something like 5000 and diplomatic capital at 200 each I trade him 30 diplomatic capital for peace and 1000 gildar. Now that we're no longer at w

I updated my Tech Trees PDF to include some grey shading to indicate rarity (light grey is >= 50% chance, dark grey is http://cid-7d2aef4a0e3e3711.office.live.com/self.aspx/Elemental/TechsTrees.pdf

[quote who="Tertullian" reply="5" id="2765933"]If I get a sucky location without gold mines, I mine the monsters for gold. Set up a death squad to kill monsters and I get enough gold to build up a strong army for conquering. [/quote] Mining monsters for gold works incredibly well even if you do have plenty of gold mines.

[quote who="AlixeniusTheGreat" reply="3" id="2765838"]You won't have piles of manuals if you simply put it back in the box after reading, for eay reference. Plus, me being a paranoid person, I prefer to have physical copies of my games readily available in case of anything. Online security only goes so far. Physical media is eternal (I take ridiculously good care of everything I own, my game consoles and computers last for at least 5 years longer than many averages say they should), however,

By my last count, the Kingdom tree contained 106 techs and the Empire 95. For reference purposes Civ IV's tech tree contained 92 distinct techs.

It's somewhat random. If you notice, some techs appear shaded more brown or red. These techs have a less than 100% chance of being available when you level up in a research field. The Empire tech tree has more of these than Kingdom, especially in the Adventuring tree. The way it plays out, the Empire adventuring tree does feel pretty random (while still having a defined progression).

[quote who="Dewie" reply="5" id="2765413"]Resources should not be that rare. What do you have the world difficulty set to? Note that the easier setting, the more resources will be available. The only resource that is guaranteed to be near you is a fertile land tile.[/quote] Anyone know if world difficulty also impacts the number of quest givers? I bumped up the world difficulty to ridiculous recently and it seemed there were a bunch more quests available. I was also pushin

I've occasionally noticed level 3 notables pop up on the map when no one in the game is actually at notables level 3 (checked via paging through empire information, so there could be a bug there, I suppose). Generally I don't spend much time in the adventuring tree, so I don't think anything of it, but my most recent game I was changing things up some, and the oddity became more apparent. A bug seems a likely culprit.

The severity of this bug is offset by another bug that causes a wounded squad to actually hit harder against armored targets.

[quote who="AlixeniusTheGreat" reply="43" id="2764506"]Turtling should not be allowed??? When did this become Starcraft 2??? Turtling is a time-honoured strategy in 4x. [/quote] Turtling is certainly allowed, it's just a more challenging way to play given the game's current mechanics.

[quote who="ddd888" reply="70" id="2764050"]yeah how do you know where the sky starts and the earh ends? hard questions man [/quote] To continue with your metaphore, it depends on how you define the Earth and the Sky. Essentially, at what layer of the atmosphere do you consider the transition to have happened? Same goes with bugs. Some are going to be obvious. Some are going to be subtle and will straddle the line between poor design and bug.</p

How do you know where the game ends and the bugs begin? Is the exploitable combat system one big bug? How about the imbalance in the potency of the various tech trees? Some spells being vastly more useful than others? I find many people who make a similar argument to yourself are more interested in the RP side of this game. I'm interested in the strategy. I have trouble overlooking an obviously superior path to victory.

I'm a little confused how you could find archers so worthwhile. The best bow cost 40 gildar, 2 materials, and adds 6 turns to the base training cost for an attack of 6. A War Hammer (which is at the same tech depth for kingdom), on the other hand, costs 24 gildar, 1 materials and 2 metal for 24 attack. The speed penalty is offset by the bow costing 2 AP to fire while the hammer only costs 1 to swing. If you run across a lightly armored opponent with 4 armor,

[quote who="p22" reply="36" id="2763242"]Currently, you can get +1materials/gold/tech/arcane for just cost of single pioneer. Even if city had no access to any resource, you are at gain. [/quote] This is the silly part of it, in my opinion, and why city spam is as viable and desirable as it is. All of the base production buildings (both merchants and mines for gildar, for instance) are available at 0 population. If I have 10 people in my empire, the most product

[quote who="Zeferoth" reply="9" id="2763221"]True, but not because hes forced to. You have to understand they are channelers of ALL magic in the world. These are the rare beings that the magic of the world still flow through. The last hope for humanity and all that. They should be able to switch from Benevolent god, to Malevolent pissed off Scorch the Earth Demon on a whim...you know like how the Gods do it haha. [/quote] While that may be appealing to you from a lore standpoint.

Power is more about depth of knowledge than breadth. I could easily see a very powerful channeler that focused solely on the malevolent, destructive nature of fire and ignored the more stable and nuturing powers of the earth.

[quote who="thisisretarded" reply="15" id="2762021"](big money if you catch a princess!). [/quote] Big money, maybe, but you also have to deal with the stream of ogres, plumbers, etc. coming to save her.

I stopped buying anything for my champions after my first game. I Imbue a few and let them shuttle around armies. My organized leader gets as much movement increasing stuff as I can afford, but that's usually my only purchase.

[quote who="TheSAguy" reply="13" id="2762473"]Can you ever build more than one caravan? Everywhere I read it says one per city, but in my games I have buildmore than one per city sometimes, But I don't know what to do to build more.... Or is it just a bug when you're able to build more? [/quote] Depends. Empire has an extra Diplomacy tech that allows one additional caravan per city. I also think I've been able to build more than

[quote quoting="post"]In MoM nodes gave you magic points that you had to split between skill learning (how much mana you can use per turn), research and mana creation. So you had to chose. You researched a very powerfull spell ? Too bad you didn't think about the mana you would need. Enough mana ? you can only use 10 per turn. You uber-spell will need 180 turns to complete. Too bad. You had to really think ahead. A big fight in 3 or 4 turns? Everything in mana to be sure ou have enough to cas