I haven't played the game but just in principle it seems like Potential should be removed from the game. It seems like a trait that should always be picked, since it pays for itself. I don't see an easy way to balance it against traits that actually improve your character.



Unlike other traits which are situational, this is a trait that has a general purpose. The only reason not to take it right away is if you need some early combat advantages. It turns into a simple math problem, where you calculate what level the ability pays off and whether or not you think you can get to that level before the end of the game.

Is finesse a bit weak? I have not seen Finesse II or III (I have never picked Finesse since it seemed weak) but +3% to hit seems like a waste of pick.

I've only managed to get in a few hours on 0.913, so consider this a preliminary report.

I played as Pariden, default Procipinee sovereign for the test (even though I don't particularly like her picks). Large map, dense monsters, dense resource, dense magic, all other factions on challenging.

I started in a corner, had a good tile (5/3), but was blocked by a swamp, Magnar and Yithril. Since I had no room to expand, force was the only option. I picked Yithril because my army was nearer, and pretty much just ran him over with my sovereign, hero and summon, using the summons as fodder. I took both his cities and killed him quite early despite him having a good amount of troops and heroes (3 heroes and several warrior troops). He had built his cities on some really good tiles (5/3 and 5/4). But one of them was built right next to a hoarder spider lair. The spider didn't do anything to him (it seems AI ZOC doesn't break lairs?), but of course, immediately turned on me the turn after I took the city. The battle was, quite frankly, completely impossible if fought fairly, but the city was really good (the 5/4 one), so I resorted to some cheesiness and had my sovereign poison him and ran around for about 100 turns until he died of poison. It was quite hilarious...

Magnar then decides that me attacking Yithril was no good, and declared war on me, despite having a much smaller might value (not sure why - maybe he was bribed?). So I sent my sovereign back to take his city (5/2 capitol and a few others I never saw). While I was over there fighting Magnar, a drake army marched on that same 5/4 city (I think it's cursed). I saw them coming from some 20 tiles away (I had litterred the map with arcane outposts) but couldn't get my sovereign back in time. It beelined right for the city despite all my attempts to distract it. In the end, I had to spend ton of gold to rush some troops and threw just about every enchantment I had in my arsenal on them while draining my mana reserve tossing fire pillars on it. It was quite an epic fight, but I managed to win somehow...

I eventually took Magnar's capitol and demanded his surrender, he complied. But while I was busy with Yithril, the Spider, Magnar, and the Drake, Gilden had managed to grow quite strong, so I'm only in 2nd place at the moment. Not quite at the point of winning yet, but I'm starting to getting there. My infrastructure is almost complete, and if I rush Kraxis and Altar, then it would definitely be over. Unfortunately I don't have the time to finish the game atm, so here's the save.

Save: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11827581/Pariden%20G1.zip

Also, to answer your feedback points...

1. The monsters seems to be a much bigger threat than the AI factions atm. While I'm not going to claim that the monsters don't attack AI cities (I personally saw Altar's city get razed twice by rock elemental armies), there does seem to be some bugs in the behavior of monsters. Building cities next to monster lairs shouldn't be possible, but the AI does it quite often, and gets away with it too much (then again, I wonder how many AI cities do get wasted because they try this). Last game (on 0.912) I actually saw Altar build his city next to a Drake lair, encorporate the drake lair into his city, and recruited a drake from it... all while the Drake guardians are still sitting there, on top of his city. I take the city... and the Drake attacks right afterward, as it should. My experience with the Spider in this game leads me to believe that it hasn't changed. I'm also wondering why that Drake beelined for my city when it was so far away, it's one thing to roam and be territorial, it's another to seek the player out for that. While it was pretty fun, I suspect that you guys will get a lot of complaints about it if it does this too often.

Altar City w/ Drake Lair: http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m297/KStar099/Fallen%20Enchantress/FallenEnchantress_1335992830.jpg

2. The AI was doing okay building, some seems a bit better than others (might be due to starting location), but they just aren't a match for player units and strategy yet, so when they go to war with me is usually when they die. They do build troops, well armed and armored, but they lack a strategy that compliments those troops. For example, using summons as fodder while your heavy hitters destroy them... or using poison and then running around in a circle... or buffing your troops to kingdom come and defeat a Drake with some spearmens. When you're faced with that kind of player strategy, they just aren't going to win. Then again, as long as they put up a good fight, that's all that matters. That's why I generally play on hard to give them a bit of an edge.

Pillar Of Flame and others spells like it hit more then one army on a tile.  

Now that the AI attacks and what not, it tends to move its armies around in a big stack.  I was able to hold back the Gilden advance by casting Pillar of Flame once to kill all 3 of his armies. Also tested Tremor, Freeze, and Wither they also work on every army that in on the same tile.

Just started a game; got pounced by wolves before I could even build a city.  More details here.

The only thing I don't like so far are the new borders, I prefer the old ones.  But that's just nit-picking.

I'm noticing quite a bit of instability compared to 0.912... I'll upload the crash files a bit later in another post. I'm lucky to get to 50 seasons at the moment. I'll reboot again and see if it is more stable. I deleted my custom faction/sovereigns/old saves/etc and recreated with the new patch. Gonna try and play another game. I admit that I do ctrl-n quite a bit in the beginning so I can get a reasonable start - I'm trying to test the entire tech tree for Empire.

Oh yeah, I noticed a bug with the Obsession spell. I recruited a champion with that spell - it only works as a tactical spell, but it should be a strategic spell (as per the description). Since the game crashed I didn't get to grab all the details. I'll get the Hero's name and details (he's an Empire hero) and post a bug report if someone doesn't beat me to it.

(Partial repost from another thread)

I think there are multiple nice changes in 0.913. Much funnier to play! Currently the biggest issue seems to be that once you get some basic weapons technology and squads, then building a couple of units and casting buffs on them will create such a killer stack that it is able to beat almost anything on the map. Maybe the units scale up a bit too much on level-up, and maybe the steps between technologies needs to be just a little bit smaller. Having +1 attack for a weapon means a squad is doing +5 damage... I was able to beat a dragon using basically second and third level technology! Also, when you get your units in full armor (even leather) they become very hard to hit.

It is also pretty easy to level-up, as moving wounded units behind fresh ones is easy. I believe the AI is not able to do this, and thus the player has a huge advantage. Maybe overall the level-up bonuses for _normal_ units should be smaller?

Another thing: even more powerful monsters guarding. The power of the spawns need to be considered carefully.

Once a guardian monster gets inside borders, it should just kill the city/outpost which is responsible for the borders and then return back to its nest. That is, it should not then rampage the whole map.

I felt the start of the game was really nice, but at around 50 turns the monsters weren't a threat at all anymore.

Overall the game feels much, much better from 0.90. All of the above is just from single game...

In addition to complaining, I want to say that I really like the new spell icons and the new territory border look.  So many minimalistic shinies!

Settings are set to: standard map size.  5 enemy factions (total 6 incl me, 3 Empire, 3 Kingdom), challenging world difficulty, challenging faction difficulty, dense monsters, standard resources, standard magic.  I played as vanilla Magnar.

1. Monsters seem to have a nice balance now, there is some stuff that can I kill solo from the get go if I burn a bit of mana, and there is stuff that I waited till I had a unit or two (ended up using another champion) to kill.  I overestimated a couple of battles and a promising champion became useless (this is good, I shouldn't be able to wipe the floor everytime).  Overall ABOUT RIGHT for monster threat and aggressiveness.
2. AI players, aren't a threat.  I waited until I was ready then pounced on Ythril.  even though in the save I have attached, I don't have the highest "power rank", there is only one way into my territory for all the teams who are left, I have my sov and a champion in strong enough equipment, and way higher level than the AI Sovereigns, such that I cannot lose. You'll notice how early it is in the game too.  All I will do to mop up is attack tarth, which will be a cakewalk with my spellcaster, then I will be sooo powerful compared to anyone left they'll all ally with me cheaply (or surrender after I declare war).
3. diffiiculty was challenging for all settings.
4. Magnar, vanilla.  Go slave lords
5. The Ai can't seem to graduate while killing monsters.  The last few games I have played, all the Sovs and champions are either broken beyond repair, or really low level.  Perhaps the taactical AI doesn't recycle injured units very well?  by recycle I mean, if a unit is hurt, retreat the unit to live another day.  If a unit has to be sacrificed, the lowest/designated sacrifice should be the one left next to the enemy.  That simple change would allow the sov or champion to level up, even though you lost a spearman or two taking out a slightly bigger enemy than the sov could solo.   Also, Attacking spells seem to be underrated compared to buffs and debuffs.  Change the waiting to buff defense/dmg spell being equal value, and things might change dramatically.
6. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6868387/AutoSave.EleSav
7. save game attached.  I think I've explained above what will happen next.  If Tarth doesn't have a gigantic army and LOTS of mana + is willing to attack me NOW, I win.
8. Overall, this was much more challenging, and I did a lot more thinking to get to this point.  GOOD WORK     Next stp..... Making me lose....

Well, this is much challenging even it's on normal level, even I did add item to my sovgain. My biggest problem for level your sovgain,  experience seem cape at 10 level, almost slow down to most stop, this is big problem for mage, unable to gain stronger or unable get new spell for mage to get all level, he had to be 25 level at least, and lot more of level to pick to make more spell damage as well. so I said mage need to be 30 level at best at least, but on other hand it's ok for warrior, though. I don't know I wonder if a.i cheat by spam city too fast in too soon turning.

Can't really say much about the new patch, since installing it, my game crashes every 15 seasons or so, so I'm gonna wait for the next one.

Was able to play about an hour last night.

1) all settings @Challenging

2) Large Map

3) Custom Sov

Continued to be very stable for me - no crashes to report.

Monsters more aggressive.

 AI doing much better job finding & taking goodies.

Leveling up for Sov & champions slower but not crippling.  Just have to watch what I attack.  AI seems to be able to handle harder Monster groups.

Magnar just declared war & I've been able to handle his attacks but haven't seen any of his champions or Sov to see how AI handles magic.

Will check in later tonite after game matures.

Difficultly - Beginner

Started and was swamped by monsters, monsters also attacked my shards and mines. 

While handling all of this and trying to build up my town the AI got extremely more powerful and then declared war on me.

Basically game over.

If it's like this on beginner I am going to need a baby mode.

Verdict - game play was much better before patch.

This all sounds sooooo good. Aggressive monster, AI grapping goodie huts and all that. Its such a pain reading all this, while sitting at work.