Yes, the early game is using ranged units and letting the enemy come to you. Later, the archers just help out. I'm interested in paying orc since they have no ranged units. Right now I'm playing as high men and those damned arcane cannons piss me off. If I have no horse units to charge them, they destroy me. Anyone know a good strategy against arcane cannons?
Thanks for the feedback. The first two points will be easy to add, but the third would be quite time-consuming even in this brief version. It'll probably appear later on, but as a nice spell list.
High men have paladins, but they're the top tier unit. They are fast though. I dealt with arcane cannons by peppering them with fire from my crossbowmen. Then I took over dragon town, discovered elementalists...
Floating Islands Anyone used these? Basically transport. Good for scouting the sea in force. @doomtrader the AI seems to HATE my floating islands. Every turn they're attacking my floating island. All I can do is press the "auto resolve" button as I've no option to intervene. They AI cannot damage the island. It's funny, but I'm pretty sure it's a bug.
Wow, thanks for the responses, guys. Mint, appreciate your comments and the links! Null, you really went above and beyond with detailed answers to every one of my questions! Your approach is almost 180 degrees from what I was doing. It sounds like the biggest problem I had was not cranking out the units early in the game. I'll try that (and incorporate some of your other suggestions) during my next run and will attempt to give that AI some payback! It sure is cool to be able to play a full fledged fantasy 4X on my iPad. It's odd to have a couple of nice computers sitting unused by my side while I'm playing an immersive, complex game on my iPad instead. . Without this thread, I may not have given it a chance.
@khann re Dwarven Rune Cannons: The best weapon against them is indeed magic, just like faceleg already suggested. They have Mundane Resistance 10, reducing all normal damage by 10 points. On top of that, they are immune to critical hits. And to Unholy/Death damage, keep that in mind when playing Unhallowed/Death. And Orcs are fun just playing an easy game for fun currently, then it's all-melee time with Orcs. Will write a report about that one for sure. @faceleg re Floating Islands: Never used those. For one, I prefer flying combat units. Two, as far as I know they can only move over water, but not land (which would be cool, and I think worked in MoM). Third, and the most important: it's a turn where I could cast something else, e.g. summon another monster for my army or boost one of my towns. @Mintdragon: I don't have any other suggestions for the Manual currently. You covered what would be good additions really well already @Argony: Always welcome, and my pleasure! Wish you success in your next games, let us know how things go. Note though that you do not have to play aggressive right from the start. Some Races are better at blitzing, like Grey Elves and Orcs. While Dwarves, Draconians and - to a lesser degree - Unhallowed are better suited for a slow and steady approach. A lot also depends on which spell school(s) you pick. I never tried with the Elves, but I guess that an approach like turtling up and beelining for Pegasus/Unicorn Riders or Grey Mages could work as well.
These are actually some of the most exciting gaming news I've heard in a while. Me and my badly synchronized pals have been waiting a long, long time for a new async 4X for iOS. You had my money (and I myself a shiny new 4X) as soon as I read your reply. When the day for grand implementation comes - if you haven't already - please take a long and attentive look at Code Monkey's Carcasonne and Playdek titles (Ascensions, Summoner Wars, Lords of Waterdeep) for really smooth async implementations for the platform. EDIT: And when you, allied victory (to allow for true cooperative play) and local multiplayer through hotseat would be wonderful additions. (I haven't quite gotten over the lack of both in the otherwise monumental Endless Legend.)
Thanks for your consideration; also I forgot about MedievalNerds spreadsheet for spells, I think that can be used for quite awhile until a spell list/table is available. As player questions pop up, I'll repost the link from the other forum. @everyone, link to a spellbook in spreadsheet form is here link to the original forum post is here
[BUG] Battle-summoned Shambling Mound spell Cloud of Flies stopped working Found another bug, I can reproduce it: When you summon a Shambling Mound during battle, it can cast "Cloud of Flies". Normally, that does a f-ton of damage, but not anymore. Now, you cast the spell and nothing at all happens. Then, combat does not proceed any further, you have to do "Autoresolve" to get out of it. This still worked correctly pre v1.2.1. @Wastelands: I just sent you my saves. Take the one named "BugCombatCloudofFlies". To reproduce: 1) Load the save. 2) Go to the Tainted Master Hero, let him start a fight somewhere. 3) Have him summon a Shambling Mound. *** 4) Select the Mound, and cast Cloud of Flies. Note that spell text shows, but nothing happens - i.e. no damage done. Combat Log correctly shows "save failed/passed", but also shows no damage numbers. 5) Try to end the turn, this doesn't work now. You need to do auto-resolve to get out of the battle. This save also shows a second problem: Sometimes, when you hit the "unused unit" main button, the map scrolls to a completely different part. To reproduce: 1) Load the save. 2) Hit the main button with the "next unit" icon. 3) Note that an army with Dran in the first spot gets selected. 4) The map scrolls up to the middle top, a little off to the NW of the actual army. This is wrong. 5) Hit the button again. Now the map centers correctly on the army. ***This shows problem #3: The bug with learned spells showing multiple times isn't completely resolved, S.Mound still shows thrice.
Good & Bad AI Behaviour examples Good news first: AI just attacked a slightly under-defended town of mine with a nice multi-wave: I forgot to note what the first army was, but also nothing to sneeze at. The first wave killed over half my garrison, despite some lucky hits and spellcasting on my side. Two turns later, a full stack of mixed Draconians (Trackers, Hunters, Spellswords, Javelineers) shows up, which I barely managed to defeat with my 3 Trackers & 2 Hunters (built since the first attack) plus 1 garrison Tracker, losing 4 of the 6 units and the survivors almost dead. Right after that, on the same turn, it sent in another army of 5 Dracs, this time obliterating me and stealing my town. What really stood out is that the AI sacrificed a Spellsword to completely massacre me. Even with Circle of Protection, a Spellsword with "Blazing Martyr" did over 60 damage in one hit, killing one of my units each time. And I could barely scratch it in return. Definitely worth losing one unit if it wipes out almost the whole enemy army on its own. Good job there. Need to remember that and use it myself The not-so-smart move was that several "not-martyred" units kept attacking my unit in the Protection Circle, so I wiped out a good chunk of the AI army in return. Just letting the Martyr Spellsword blaze through my units would have been enough to win the fight. Now, the bad news: 1) I cannot imagine that you are so desperate for getting more Food that you offer a trade as shown in the screenshot. That's just outright stupid. 2) Another instance of the AI sending out a *severely* under-armied Hero. The army on the right is mine, just to be clear. They shall tremble before Gontar's might! ... nah, just kidding Gontar has top spot on the list of Heroes who should never leave your Capital, unless you bring along serious firepower in a full-stack. Even then, it's quite a risk: the poor sod's so squishy, just looking at him sharply makes him drop dead
[BUG] Rewards in emptied dungeons available again after reload / end turn Got another one: When you clear a dungeon, and get the reward: The next turn, and/or after a reload of a saved game, the reward is available again to pick up, only without having to fight the guardians this time. Screenshot attached.
Update on "good/bad AI - Dracs attacking" post: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3813945&postcount=910 Phew... that was the most intense, most dangerous and best-coordinated AI attack I faced so far. Real nailbiter, that one. By putting a few units in strategic spots, I slowed down the enemy assault enough that I still have my Drac town. But now I have 2 towns - the Drac one, and the Dwarven one a bit north of it - that are effectively without any garrison. If anything else comes my way next turn, it's highly likely I'll lose both towns. I'm betting them on the chance that the Rune Golem I sent to conquer the nearby enemy town can do so on its own, with help from Circle of Protection and what other spells I have. If not, I dare say I'm pretty much screwed in that part of the map. Clearly shows that I over-extended my territory, as I didn't bring garrison units with me when I conquered those 2 towns. Usually I try to have 4+ units prepared already, to march in immediately after the main army leaves. Or, if that's not possible, I keep my main army camped there for the turns needed until I have a proper garrison in place. Didn't do so this time, and it backfired pretty spectacularly. Whichever aggro AI personality that was, I want to see more of it The only flaw I can attest the AI here is that it went after my Scouts/blockers. Ignoring them and going straight for the two towns would have been the better choice: in that case, I'd have lost both. UPDATE: Second small nitpick, something where the AI can still improve: In the above scenario, it did split its units into one large and several small armies. If you really want to march all over your enemy, you don't do that. Against two large armies, I wouldn't have stood a chance.
Finally won my first conquest game on mageling: all my previous runs on this difficulty tended to end with gamebreaking bugs, losing my main fort to a surprise attack, or turtling up for the spell of domination. Three planes, two AI lords, went with a mixed life/earth build with dark elves for production/food/popgrowth buffs. They're pretty fun - I made an army of sixteen weavers and went around annihilating everything in a single turn with Bolts of Doom. The first AI lord was on my starting plane (prime), and after a quick rush they were down within the first thirty turns or so - some neutrals actually ended up finishing them off for me. Chilled for the next seventy turns or so building up my cities, clearing out some neutral features, then exploring the shadow plane. The second lord turned out to be on the paradise plane, with a ton of crappy orc cities. Once I started attacking, about half of them promptly fell to neutrals before I even got to them - he made a couple weak attempts to start up new cities on other planes, but I was vigilant in clearing them out. MVP award goes to a giant salamander titan I got from some monument. Loaded it up with a ton of life buffs and stoneskin, and once plunked down in a circle of protection it was pretty much invincible - cleared out half of the paradise plane all by itself. Side note: that bug with Cloud of Flies also appears with a couple other DoT spells - Hold Undead is the most notable one I can recall offhand.
Incidentally, how on earth do you afford filling cities with so many units so early in the game like the guide suggests? After my initial rush I had about four cities in the first twenty turns, and keeping a token force of four units or less in each one while working on my main army in my central city was running me constantly in the red - I survived only through diverting the entirety of my massive power production to mana income and turning that to gold via alchemy. It took me the next twenty turns just to get to a point where the cities weren't massive income drains.
@Jenman: Congratulations on winning! Food, food, and more food No, really, it's as simple as that. Like I wrote in my reply to Argony, I usually keep my Capital producing cheap units like Raiders, Archers, or Dwarven Defenders up to at least turn 50. Even on Gamespeed 1x, the basic units only take one turn to produce. And if they don't, I let that town do something else and produce the garrison elsewhere; or outright buy the garrisons if I have enough Gold. Conquered towns are just there to build their garrisons; and then mostly produce food, sometimes with only one or two units on Production. Also, I always play extremely aggressive during early game. Sometimes I have 5 towns before turn 10, if they are close enough to my Capital. In games that went really well, I had 10 towns before turn 25 even; but that is admittedly rare. In general, once you get the conquest ball really rolling, it pretty much fuels itself. On top of that, I almost always use Spells like Tranquility, Fertile Soil, etc. to boost my towns; with a focus on food production. The price I pay is that my towns are barely developed. Practical example: In my current Greyelf game, I only started with the buildings to get Rangers on turn 40 or so. And produced my first Rangers on turn 45, I think. I didn't build anything else yet, only Archers and Druids. Most of my other 10 towns look the same: They only have a few buildings like Granaries - which most of the time already existed when I conquered them - and just keep on cranking out the cheapest possible units. The only exceptions are 2 Highmen towns and a Greyelf town which are so far away from the action that it's not worth producing units there. They are building the Bank tree to get me more Gold. And I absolutely wanted to fast-track my conquered Drac towns to Elementalists. But that wasn't possible, because I had to keep producing cheap basic units to defend against the constant attacks. Like I wrote in the two "good&bad AI" posts: I overstretched with conquering towns at the other end of the map without bringing proper garrisons along; Teleport Stones still entice me to make this kind of mistake But what I do is an extremely dangerous approach, when I cannot clean out the surrounding areas fast enough. All it takes to make my towns collapse is one dedicated attack with stronger units, as I described in the "good&bad AI" posts. In a few turns I can tell if I survived or if I lost 2-3 towns. But the counter-offensive is almost ready, and should be there in 5 (first wave) to 10 (second wave) turns At some point, typically between turns 50 and 75 (at the latest), adding more basic garrisons simply doesn't cut it anymore. Then I need to hunker down and gear up for producing higher-tier units as fast as I can. For that, I usually only select one or two towns with the highest production bonus (and good units, e.g. Drac Elementalists); set everyone on Production, and have other towns provide the Food/Gold upkeep. The only time where I don't need to focus so much on Food is when I play summons-heavy. Then Mana is the deciding factor, and I invest into that infrastructure as much as possible. Oha, wall of text again. Hope I could explain it well enough to make sense. If you have any questions, ask away. And if you can point me to parts of the guides where it's not clear what I'm doing and why, that'd be great. I'll update those then.
We are finally hoping to have two new parts of tutorials this week. Edwin has got a new microphone, so he is good to go. In the long run we are aiming to have two parts released every week. However keep in mind that in the future some of them are going to be dedicated for PC and consoles.
Just to record it really quick: One Dwarven Rune Golem - boosted with Circle of Protection, Bless, Bone Aura - is enough to comfortably demolish 13 Drac Trackers and 2 Founders. Only lost half of its 100hp. Proves what I wrote in the post above this: at some point, basic units become pretty much useless, chaff and cannon fodder. Would have been quite different though, if the enemy Sorcerer had brought some serious damage, protection, or summon spells to the table, I am reasonably certain. Casting one Sunburst only was not the best choice. @Wastelands: Is the Construct trait's crit immunity working correctly? In the above situation, I took two hits with >20 damage each. Given the normal Tracker damage range and the defensive boosts, those just scream "critical hit" at me. I couldn't figure out in the combatlog if it were crits indeed, though. Oh yes, combatlog: Can we please have a second setting for that tiny window? I.e. a "maximise" button that makes it fill half the screen or so? The current one is almost impossible to use if you want to follow a larger battle. Also, like someone else already mentioned: that scrolling through the log also scrolls the map is rather irritating. Would be great if you can change that in a future update. And a question about damage resistances: Do those stack? My Golem had 15 mundane and 15 pierce resistance. But in the log I only saw "15 resisted", leading me to believe that only the highest resistance number counts. If they stack, I'd have expected 30 total damage resistance.
I find that with buildings you clear and keep Like ruins and libraries. I'll check every 15-20 turns or so to get more. I don't know if it is a bug, but definitely helped me win my game yesterday.
I encountered this same bug. It occurs every time I save/load, possible of occurring multiple times on the same turn.
[BUG] Extra units added to army after fight with Shade of Night @Wastelands: Just happened, I sent you my savegames. Repro steps: 1) Load the "Elf1" game. 2) Complete the turn (#59). 3) Go to Shade of Night. Have him fight manually in the Druid Henge 3 steps SW of him. Note that the Henge has Fire Elementals, Chaos Spawn, Efreet, Hell Hounds, Gargoyles. 4) NOTE: You need to get some enemy units raised as Undead by Shade for this to happen. 5) Go to the Argolath. Have it manually conquer the town NW of it. 6) If it happens again, the Argolath will now have some of the units that were in the Henge in its army as well. 7) To see the effect, load the save "Elf2". Go to the Argolath. Note that, after conquering the town, it also has a Hellhound, Fire Elemental and Chaos Spawn in its army.
