UI Consistency A further observation on the distinction between short taps and long taps and the potential for user confusion (such as mine). On the over-world map a short tap is required to bring up the unit/army box but a long tap is required to bring up the stats/abilities/perks screen. Bearing in mind of course that we are all currently playing PC without sound effects which most likely will support/ and provide feedback to our actions. Looking forward to hearing them!
Balance issue: Summoned Skeletons vs. Mummies Just throwing this out here really quick, it's part of the Unhallowed gameplay report I am currently working on (to throw in between the Beginner's Guide posts). This looks to me like quite the balancing problem. Mummies cannot hold a candle to the Skeletons. And I didn't have the time yet to compare both against other early summons, so I don't have any more hard data than the info below. Going by the experience of my other playthroughs so far, it seems that the Skeletons totally take the cake from any other summon, until they encounter foes that are too strong even for a full group of 16 to handle. Summoning: Skeleton Warriors vs. Mummies In short, Mummies aren’t worth it, go for the Skeletons. Starting with 9 Death Magic and Death Mastery, we only have access to 2 Summons: Skeleton Warriors, and Mummies. A Mummy costs 127 Mana to summon, and 2 Mana/turn upkeep. A Skeleton comes at 17 Mana, 0 upkeep. Mummies only move at 2 to the Skeleton’s 3, and are not that much stronger in combat. For the cost of one Mummy, we get 7.5 Skeles, a small army already. With the boosted casting skill of 40 from Archmage, we can summon 2.4 Skeletons per turn. 7 turns and 272 Mana later, we have a real army of 16 Skeletons, ready to rock. For comparison: For the same resources, we’d only get 2.2 Mummies. I’ll leave the rest as exercise for the reader. For the record, 15 Skellies were good enough to take over 3 enemy cities on 2nd hardest diffculty. The first two fights they won without any losses. And I still have 6 of them left after they got massacred during the last takeover against a much stronger force. They still won quite decisively - thanks to some generous spellcasting on my part - and the city is mine, though
Skeletons do sound like a much better deal. BTW: Have you ever seen Félix Bonfils 1875 photograph of an Egyptian Mummy Seller? It's my go-to image whenever I hear the word. Edit: link should work now.
Never needed in-battle saves so far. A long battle can take 5-10 minutes, sure. But if I don't want to do that, or don't feel like it, I just use the autocombat function. Admittedly, it's not as smart as a human player; but I don't expect that it knows every dirty trick in the book and takes it into account for the calculations.
I still haven't experimented with engineers building roads. You mention them a lot @Nullzone. Would you mind explaining how you use them, i.e. how they fit into your plans? Thanks!
UI Request: rename city, jump to city Two things I really miss currently, with almost 10 cities things get a bit hard to remember. 1) From the city list, jump the map to the city, e.g. via long tap (which currently doesn't have a function). 2) Rename cities. I simply forget which one I wanted to turn into a production center, which one is on Housing till something interesting happens, etc. Giving them my own descriptive names would help a lot here. Suggestion: long tap on the name in the city's overview screen.
Roads speed up unit movement quite nicely. I don't know what they use exactly, so I just assume they reduce movement cost through all terrain to 1. Much better than e.g. 3 points through mountains. In MoM, the main use of roads was for fast army transport, which is the case in Planar as well. As a secondary effect, they also added to a city's trade income. But I don't think that's implemented here yet. As I wrote in the guide, for the Elves it doesn't matter much, as all their units are quite fast with 4+ movement. For contrast, the Unhallowed siege cannon has a whopping 2 moves; takes ages to get it anywhere Re: Guides. If all goes well, I'll put up first part of the Undead Interlude tomorrow.
Thanks for the explanation. You know, I can imagine using them simply to recognisably mark parts of the map as I find myself getting very easily lost (even on a single-plained, normal sized, 90%-landmass)!
That makes sense. I've so far only been playing elves. Great. Looking forward to adding yet another dimension to this game. Edit: I do wish there was more macro-variation in the maps. Your thoughts on naming cities and the suggestion that came up the other day about having a record of what's been scouted and what not would all help reduce disorientation.
While I see races clearly have their own unique units, do they also have unique town buildings (not jus graphically different but unique function/modifiers)?
I only tried 4 Races so far. What it looks like: You have a base set of buildings everyone gets, like the +Power line of Temples, the +Research line of University, and the various military buildings. At least the Insects (one building that increases population growth) and the Unhallowed (centered around corrupting the area and generating Negative Energy, plus a unique building for units) have race-specific ones, too. With Grey Elves and High Men I don't recall that they had anything specific.
Healing Rates Anyone care to share information/observations concerning healing rates? I've found at least 1 reference in the Worlds of Magic manual to a unit's "natural healing rate" but I've neither seen evidence of it nor can find any further information as to what that rate might be... Is there a connection between healing rate and available movement points? Is there a difference between putting a unit into 'healing mode' (or splitting off damaged units and putting them into healing mode) or applying the healing function to a whole army? Thanks!
