[REQUEST] Change Mentor & Summon Hero/Champion to pick from a list @Doomtrader: Could you consider the following for a future update: Currently, the Mentor perk and the Summon Hero & Summon Champion spells give you a random Hero/Champion. Can that be changed to allow selecting the Hero from a list? Ideally, this would be a setting at game creation that you can toggle between "classic" style (what we have now), and "select from list". Reason: If the Hero I get does not fit into my plans, I just reload until I get one that suits me. Breaks immersion quite a lot. To smooth gameplay flow and eliminate the reloading, why not allow selecting Heroes from a list. Inns and Dungeon rewards should stay random, of course.
Unit Levels @Nullzone it looks like you were right. When I started a new game at a higher difficulty level I was able to get my regular units to level up past level 4. Thanks again for tne idea.
Example Swarm Orc early play is up Phew, I just posted the example early play, using the Swarm build from earlier with Orcs. You can find it in the Guide thread here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=3794092#post3794092 Fun fact: I hit the 10.000 character limit almost spot on, 9.950 or so It would be great if more people can do breakdowns of early game for other Race/Sorcerer combinations, so we can compare things. While I have a few ideas of my own (e.g. I want to finish an Insect game once I am done with my Darkelves), I am open to suggestions what you want me to cover next.
Really appreciate your work @nullzone ! I played insects a game, they sure can make a lot of gold - and with workers doubling as garrison can get a very nice road network up. I havent tried the dark elves at all, so something with them would be interesting to read. Edit: Oh, +1 on hero suggestion btw! Currently playing hallowed, and havent managed to get a hallowed hero which I'd really like (they do have heroes right?) A bit the same when i played dragons, having flying units is not so great if you want to drag a non-flying hero around..
@manneger: Thanks, nice to see when people like what I write The Unhallowed do have a few thematically fitting Heroes (with the Undead trait): Aelys the Broken (Fighter), Izzir the Damned (Paladin), Ixi the Ghost (Rogue). The four Darkelf Assassins also are okay in my book, especially as I see them like Drow. Dran the Draconian Spellsword (Wizard) oddly enough doesn't have the Living trait; I do think that's an oversight, however. Unhallowed Champions: Nehanash & Amu-Hah Shekala are Wizards, General Krull Darkheart is a Paladin. While Sigfrida Blackwing (Cleric) is one of the Living, I think her artwork makes her fit in with the Deadboys quite well. The various Masters of the Invisible Order Champions seem to be Illithids/Cthulhuesques and fit the thematic bill too. The Darkelves play quite well, but I have nothing special to write home about. I used my Swarm build, to see if it works with a low pop-growth race as well. Hint: Yes, it does Will just copy my notes for the Vassal Races post: Thralls are okay as cheap garrisons and/or cannon fodder. I advise against using Wardens: their Unholy attacks heal Undead, which limits their use. Cranking out masses of Enforcers gives us a great ranged assault army. In any case, I recommend getting a few Crossbow Girls for the main army. Later in the game, we can use Arachnomancers and Weavers as Casters, and Cutters as strong Melee. Towns can be built for upkeep support, and/or for military. Both paths work well with the Darkelves, all the way to the endgame. Re: Heroes: I am running around with four Heroes in my main army, all blinged up to the max quite the force multiplier.
Just finished a large, 6 oppos, hardest difficulty w hallowed. Is there a difficulty bug? I think all (like 3... ) games i've finished have registered as Adept diff when scoring comes up - at first i thought it might be an error with scoring, bit what if it actually plays as second easiest diff rather than hardest?!? I did use those OP skeletons a lot, but it was still remarkably easy - only two of the NPCs ever even got a 2nd city (both very close to me, i took their cities early on) - i played with the cartographer perk so i could follow their development.. Something seems odd about this, and if all difficulties equal adept that could explain the odd (=weak) AI behavior..?
AND! Now that i think of it, i think all my games have played as pangaea, even if i sometimes have chosen (2-3) continents?!? (most of my games i actually chose pangaea) Did anyone else notice any of these potential bugs with starting options? I play v 1.1 on iphone 6.
A couple of days ago @Nullzone also finished a game at the hardest difficulty and noticed that the final scoring screen calculated his score as if he'd played at the easiest (Adept) setting. Who knows if the AI problem lies with the settings or is simply an error/bug within the final scoring screen? I personally have decided to take a break from playing the game. The many bugs (and unanswered questions here) are slowly tipping the scales towards a feeling of frustration which I'd rather not have. I'll keep watching the thread and hope that the next couple of updates improves things.
Could you tell me what settings have you got? Plane, Land mass, World size. I can try to reproduce it.
1 plane, large, default plane type, hardest difficulty, 6 opponents, fast, and second lowest on resources/neutrals etc. I think 70% land mass, but not 100% sure about that.
I just made a couple tests and for most of the time 70% of land mass is creating some kind of tow or three parts pangea, like islands connected with a narrow passage.
Back from playing, more on that in a minute. re: Adept only for score calculation: I had that the second time now, that my Archmage game gets scored as Adept. Quite sure it's a scoring only bug, the endgame was hard enough. Landmass settings seem to work. I created a few test games, and e.g. 20% Land Islands generates several isolated islands in a sea; looked great, by the way, and should be the ideal playground for flying Draconians. Archmage difficulty definitely works Just completed my Darkelf game after several hours of nonstop fighting on ~Turn 150. I ran into stacks of Doomdrakes and other heavy hitters constantly for the last part of the game. Having high-powered Heroes, Units and Spells not only helps, but is a necessity at that point. So all that dungeon-crawling to power up does make a big difference. I was burning through hundreds of Mana each turn for powering my combat casting. Including crafting, I spent several thousand(!) just on the last 50 turns. And kept researching endgame Spells at an extreme rate, with almost 200RP per turn (and only from buildings in 20 towns). And had multiple stacks of high-firepower units like Draconian Elementalists roaming the map, in addition to my juggernaut of a main army. I'll do a longer analysis later maybe. One lesson learned that I can summarise right away is: Building up secondary armies needs to commence way earlier than I did this time, ideally already around turn 25 when the first round of expansion is done. Another is that for assault armies high-tier units make a world of a difference. Both my Heroes and my regular units (Elementalists!) had massive-damage AoE spells. And I really needed those to cut through the endgame enemies. Was excitingly hardcore for the endgame Great job with that, @Wasteland! As next one I plan to do the Insects, with a full turn 25 analysis and some interesting restrictions; e.g. playing them swarmlike (think WH40K Tyranids or Starcraft Zerg), razing all enemy towns and only settling my own ones, or using only Heroes of their own race (plus the Illithid Masters, those are alien enough to fit into the theme). Spell focus will be Summoning this time; mainly because I am curious if high-power Summons can replace Heroes.
@nullzone If you had twenty towns endgame and the difficulty felt like it worked - did that mean the AI had 10+ towns too? I'm still to see an AI with more than 3, amd with such a difference in towns/economy...
Yes, that is my experience too. Never had to use a boat yet (never played with the small island setting).
I will ask Edwin to take a look into the schemes with two or three continents on 70% and we will try to better divide them. This might be however tricky with such big land masses. Could you please post a screenshot, I'm curious is it more like Pangea, or rather two or three masses connected with kind of passages.
No, unfortunately not. While the enemy Sorcerer towns were a lot better defended in the endgame, they still had only 1-3. The main threat were the huge and dangerous neutral stacks. Even without their towns working together, the Neutrals sent out massive armies swarming all over the map. At turn 100+, enemy Sorcs should have at least 10 towns too. Really wish I could dig through the AI to see why that is not happening Didn't use boats yet either, I keep relying on fliers.
AI Behavior To build on @Nullzone's comments: The AI that operates the independent units is excellent, They are a threat from fairly early on and late game build and attack with large (full stacks of 16) armies. Why not use whatever makes the AI for the independents so aggressive as AI for at least some of the non player empires? The game is already a lot of fun. With aggressive AI for the non player empires it would be great.
