So I promised i would give a little personal review/piece of mind about the game once i played enough, here goes ! I just finished my first game, on a small world with 1 opponent, i fiddled around with game settings a bit before starting a game for good, so all in all i played about 5 hours in the past 2 days... which is all my gaming time really ! Ill start with this one thing, this game is amazing ! I didnt have as much fun in a strategy game for quite some time, enjoyed my time so much I just purchased the complete pack. There is definitely a bit of room for polishing the experience (like any games of that caliber, this is an enormous and ambitious game, recently released) but the amount of possibilities and options is astonishing. This game is COMPLICATED, it really is, and it feels GOOD. I am utterly tired of those games that hold your hand and dont make you work and think. There is so many options offered to you at any moment, the strategic depth is to the roof. As far as 4x games go, i will admit civilization holds a dear place in my heart, but with upcoming patches i feel this game has the potential to blow my mind even more than civ. If youre on the fence, i say, at least buy the base version at 13USD$, forget about the negative reviews, all of those compare this game to other games on the gendrr that are PC exclusive, lets not forget that PQ is a one of its kind on iOS, even xcom got some content removed for the sake of porting, this game has 0 content removed or altered, ZERO. There's 2 things that did bother me a bit during my play so far, nothing that make the game bad but id like to share : 1. A lot of spells dont have any kind of animations, would be nice to have animations on everything, for beauty's sake... i understand that graphics arent the main point of a 4X game, but its always nice to look good. 2. I feel there might be some balancing needed, now please dont take me wrong, i am not looking for the game to be 100% equal everywhere, that would be boring, but.... During my playthrough i played Ariel, which has life magic mastery, i had that spell, Circle of Protection, right at the start... That spell is just too good, its like beyond overpowered, i handled everything my opponent threw at me with a single swordman (played high-men) and circle of protection + enchant weapon.... it felt kind of cheesy. Maybe just reducing the power of some very overpowered stuff might be in order. With that ill leave a shorter review of the canadian app store, you guys at wastelands deserve that 5 stars ! I see myself playing this game for a LONG time, im seriously having way more fun than expected with this game, the HoMM feel on combats with deeper strat is so great, and the part i always disliked more about HoMM (the management) is instead replaced by civ-like management... its like a dream game for me, really. All right, now ill stop goshing and continue to play ! I might not be very experienced with the genre but ill try to answer questions if i can ! Thanks to those who read this.
I feel so stupid now.... the warning i thought it was just a note that you wouldnsee on every piece of land, i tried looking far away with it and saw that the (I) Must be build further than 5 squares away from a city " dissapeared... oh well, thanks for helping stupid me # Btw i think i just found a bug : I am unable to change the animation speed in the settings, once i changed it from the default 5 it always sets itself to 3 no matter what i choose, lets say i choose speed x2, i close the settings window, then open again speed will be x3.
Can anyone comment on what race has the best ranged attack units all around? I have played three matches, increasing the difficulty and number of opponents and I slaughter the competition using grey elves with rangers. I should mention that I build my character with the following: Augmentation - 1 fertile soil Biomancy - 2 heal wellspring Destruction - 1 frostbolt Mentalism - 1 Tranquility Summoning - 1 Sprites Lucky Mentor Warlord Arch Mage Enchanter
@Lickzy: Elven Archers are the best ranged unit for early/mid-game, and even parts of endgame. Rangers are their beefed up cousins. The worst ranged unit are the Draconian Javelineers, cannot hit the broadside of a barn biting them in the butt and have the shortest range to boot. Later on, I really like the Dwarven Arbalests: tough as nails and can dish out good in return. Albeit a bit on the slow side with their 2 movement. I'd say Highmen Crossbowmen and Darkelf Crossbowgirls pretty much tie. The Insects' low/mid-tier ranged unit I find a bit mediocre, but it's more resilient than the Elven Archers. The ranged beetle is nice: pretty tough, can do good damage, and is a siege weapon (can damage town walls). Unhallowed Archers are a bit below average; but they have the advantage of being pierce resistant, which helps fighting enemy archers. If you include Casters, Orc Skalds (their only ranged unit) are pretty good. The best Casters are Darkelf Weavers (Doombolt!) & Arachnomancers (Spit of Bile), and Drac Elementalists. A full-stack of those can kill almost anything right in round 1.
So given my exclusive ranged play style, would you reccomend I try out dark elves for the doom bolt usage?
Weapon enchantments Another n00b question from yours truly. Do enchants like "unholy weapon" persist through battles? Never really used them so I don't know. Thanks gang
If you cast them in battle, then they are active for that one combat only. If you cast them as regular enchantment from the Magic screen, and drop them on a unit, they are permanent. Well, for as long as noone dispels them and you don't run out of Mana for upkeep. None of that should be a problem though "Spell Lock" enchant counters Dispels, and if you run out of Mana something's wrong anyways. Third option is to add them as Enchantment to a weapon you craft (permanent, obviously). But this raises the crafting cost pretty fast, and I usually advise against it (unless you have nothing better to do with all your Mana, aka endgame).
Tiers Within Diciplines? Appologies - I am certain this has been answered before, but you can only try so many search strings... Here goes: - Within the magic Diciplines (fire, life, conjugation, etc), when you create a character, is the tier that you pump points into as high as that character will ever have? Does your tier improve within the game? - Can you only research spells up too the limit of your tier in that Discipline? I just recently figured out that the starting spells you get offered at character creation is not everything, and I understand about the random nature of spells offered for research within the game. I'm sort of keen on being able to summon heroes at will, and don't quite have to patients to see how many points I need, and where. update note: I just discovered that there is an "Arcane Circle" that universal spells, including "summon hero". Cool Thanks all. Also - has anyone compiled a FAQ?
To answer your questions : Yes it is as high as you will ever have, it doesnt improve during the game, your spellcraft level however, will increase the amount of mana you can spend each turn. You will only see spells in the roulette that your discipline allows, except for arcane spells that are obtainable by all sorcerer lords. i dont know if spells obtained by events can differ from your "discipline pool" though, someone else might have the definitive answer for that one.
One correction: You *can* get extra Spell Circles from - typically high-tier - dungeons. Quite a lot actually in longer games on harder difficulties I ended one game with over 20 circle points and a metric f-ton of spells. So far, spells I got from dungeons always were from my "spell research list". I am reasonably sure you cannot get one where you don't meet the circle requirements.
I didnt know that ! must be because i only played small games so far to get used to the mechanics, man this game keeps getting better, hahaha. I love the fact that im learning new things all the time
Aside from arcane spells, you can only research spells up to your discipline limit, yes. However, most spells, aside from the 'ultimate' T9 spells, have two schools associated with them. As long as your combined discipline level reaches that point, you can research the spell. For instance, Magic Affinity, a spell that gives you a bonus 25 spellcraft, is a tier 4 Water/Augmentation spell. At least 4 points in water or augmentation allows you to research it, but so will 2 water/2 Aug, or a 3/1 combination. This can be useful if you're playing a low magic race, where you might want to go wide rather than deep on account of not having the necessary power output to support the higher tier spells anyhow. As for an FAQ, I don't exactly know if this counts, but Nullzone's excellent strategy guide thread is here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=3803871 Includes a brief race analysis that covers most races, and a list of all spells sorted by discipline, compiled by yours truly.
I learn something new each time I play with different defualt Sourcer Lords. Neve has fun offensive magic, but I like buffing my unit and heroes with things like stone skin. It is a little aggrivating, but I'll push forward.
Lickzy sent me a PM with questions about using "Superhero" units. As more people might be interested, I am replying here. 1) I played pretty much "business as usual": Destroy any enemy town that isn't worth taking over. Conquer any that look good. Note that the latter does slow you down quite a bit: You don't have any army you can leave as garrison; so if you want to play it safe, your SH wastes a few turns until you at least built a basic garrison for the new town. Waiting 4-6 turns once doesn't matter much in the long run. But it quickly adds up: with 5 towns conquered, we are already at 20-30 turns where your best unit only twiddles its thumbs. One way to mitigate this is to produce cheap garrison units somewhere, and have them trail the SH as reserve. So when you need a garrison, you have one nearby already. 2) It depends. Even without manually buffing them with Invul/Protection Circle/Earth Embrace, my Orc Wargrider Superheroes survived a surprising amount of auto-resolve battles. I think it goes more or less like this: If you have enough enchantments piled on that the opposing forces can do little to no damage, it's a win in auto-combat. Sometimes auto-resolve is a bit off the whack, though; e.g. a bunch of Drac Elementalists losing to an army they can beat with eyes closed in manual combat. So better proceed with caution, if you want to be on the safe side. Also, ground units vs. fliers acts weird: A fully powered SH Orc Wargrider beats a bunch of Archangels and company easily on manual. But they are fliers; and something in the auto-resolve routines seems to give a lot of value to that trait, when it comes to combat resolution. Same battle on auto-resolve --> dead Superhero.
