robc04
1741
I don’t remember having this much trouble winning when I played on release. On top of their improvements, I wonder if I was playing on King instead of Lord.
My personal play time is fairly limited, but this is the biggest thing that I’ve noticed - when I first wandered into the game, I built buildings Civ-style (“The more, the merrier!”). I quickly wound up struggling economically and with a tiny military because of it. Then I learned to optimize my cash flow, and found that attacking with multiple stacks (including flanking) was waaaaay easier to win with, and suddenly my empire was a force to be reckoned with.
geewhiz
1743
Sorry, I mistyped - I meant knight (one step up from easy).
I will keep at it. :)
phero.1
1744
It’s one of the things that doesn’t sit right with me, I dunno if its from Heroes or even way back from King Bounty but I’m always going for that 6 stack optimization goodness. Running around with a posse is most uncool, your six stack has to beat my six stack or I win. You can’t just add six stacks until you get what you want.
robc04
1745
I did the same thing (build stuff Civ style). It still takes me a little while to get two stacks (armies) with heroes stocked with 5 decent units, even trying to be more careful about my building. I like to send them in different areas to try and uncover more land and find some spots to build cities. I usually find 1 stack per battle does the job in the early game, but once you start to fight an AI player it becomes much more likely I’ll need at least 2. My problem is that I like the smaller battles so I think I try to take on more than I should with just 1 stack. I really wish there was an option to limit battles to 1 stack per side, or they could feed the extra units in as reinforcements as units die. I know I’m in the minority about this - most people seem to like large battles.
phero.1
1746
For me a large part of it is the micromanagement required to handle lots of stacks, it’s not that it’s hard, just tedious and unfortunately required to win against a competent AI.
Earlier today I cleared out most of the entire underground of a map with my superstack of doom, I then decided to pop up in a random place to see who was there, I took over the nearest castle in a close but good fight and I was enjoying myself. 3 turns later I have 5 full enemy stacks bearing down on me and I knew I would have to die, produce a ton of stacks, move them all up there and do it again. I just couldn’t be bothered with the micromanagement of it.
I think I would enjoy a mode where only leaders, neutral roamers and special units such as builders could move around outside home territory. If I then limited it to X leaders, each enemy could have X superstacks moving around at any given time, but no more.
ShivaX
1747
Building too much too early is the #1 trap in the game people fall into. Everything is good, so I want it all! Then you’re broke and have no army.
Really unless you’re charging for a first Palace quest, odds are you don’t need to be building that cool thing. I’ve actually taken to somewhat specializing my towns, especially if there are lairs that give good bonuses to a certain type of whatever. If you focus one town on making support, it can get there pretty darned quick and be pooping the little buggers out in about 5-6 turns. Generally speaking making a little of everything isn’t a good idea. Builders Hall and the Store House are things every town should have. Past that, it becomes better to specialize in most cases at least until you’re sure you’re sitting on the strong side of the scale.
You really have to carefully look at cost/benefit analysis in this game (which is what makes it great). You really need to make efficient choices.
A good example is specialisation of cities, as others have mentioned. Another is making use of cheap Irregular and Tier 1 units - with some of the class bonuses or treasure sites, you can get quite cheap nice units with low upkeep.
Another is where to invest your money. As a rule, cities don’t actually produce much gold and not for a long time. Treasure sites near cities are what makes the gold, and forts can do that job almost as well. Taking out neutral stacks on treasure sites yields a lot of gold, so it can be really in your interest to build units and go adventuring early rather than teching up. Think really carefully about what you need - do you have a lot of heroes casting spells or strategic enchants? Then Shrines might be useful. Otherwise, that gold might be better off invested in some Tier 1 units to clear out the mines and get a fort to quickly cover cover them, and/or conquer neutral towns.
robc04
1749
Another mistake that I’ve made in each of my 2 recent games is getting my leader killed early. I like to start really basic - 1 settler or outpost, medium army, and no skills. I enjoy building things up from scratch. Starting 1 village and with a low amount of skills isn’t bad either. Because I start so squishy, I tend to get my leader exposed and killed. It sets my expansion back a little bit. Hopefully on my 3rd game I’ll have learned my lesson and protect him a bit more.
fdsaion
1750
Next patch notes
http://ageofwonders.com/forums/topic/update-v1-51-patch-notes/
Added new Seek Inspiration spell that’s unlocked from the start of the new game (you will need to restart your games to get it). Casting the spell resets the research skill book, allowing you to pick different things.
This is a pretty cool spell. Reshuffle your research book!
Also, “•Inflict XXX abilities and abilities that debuff melee attackers (Static Shield, Fearsome, etc) now display the strength of the resistance check used to check if the debuff will be applied on the unit panel and in the tome of wonders”
I believe robc04 was asking for this very thing a few pages back.
Oh, now that’s very cool! Mulligan!
robc04
1753
I also put that suggestion with a bunch of other UI related ones on their forums. I don’t know if they added that because of my suggestion or not, but I’m glad they’re doing it.
Now if they will do the one I want the most…
Please let the user get basic information about a hex on the strategic map when it is explored buy not within their field of vision. Most important is being able to get information on a structure (what the structure does, what bonus does it give if within the domain, what level guards does it have (epic, legendary, etc). There are so many different structures it is hard to remember what does what. In the case of information that has changed since last seen (such as whether there were guards), display the information last known.
If anyone wants to lend support to that suggestion or any of the others, the thread is here. I think they focus on suggestions based on forum support, so it you like the above suggestion please post so over there. I’d really like that to be added a lot. So many times I want to see what a structure does that is outside of my range of vision.
Yay! I love both of those things.
Old school guy that I am, what I want is: the ability to put notes on the map. (And erase them.)
Sun Spear is now short range (was medium), does 4 fire/4 physical damage (was 7/7), has no ranged falloff, cooldown 2 turns (was 1 turn)
Well, it was fun while it lasted, but we all knew it was too good to …
Sun Spear is now a free action, and can be used without spending any action points.
Hmmm, maybe it still is!
kerzain
1757
Yea, I’m actually finding it more useful now than before. It’s extremely useful without that action point cost, especially since it’s available every round. And best of all, it synergizes so well with bleeding, a trait that Tigrans already exploit well a couple different ways. Coupled with the aforementioned bleeding, it’s turning out to be a great way to finish off low hp units without having to waste AP doing so that round, freeing up your units to go kill other stuff. Gifts that keep on giving.
It’s also turning out to be quite nice having that extra fire damage every round in undead treasure sites early on, especially if you need to worry about extra undead units being raised before you can kill them all fast enough.
This. I play for a couple hours, then can’t get back to the game for a couple days, and it’s so frustrating I end up just starting a new game… over and over.
And it’s not realistic. What? My empire hasn’t invented pencil and paper? Nor retainers who remember things? C’mon!
I’ve followed your link and posted support for the idea. Hope others do, too.
Yeah, I wish the structure tooltip were available through the fog. Wonder how much of a pain in the ass it would be to code it to not update until you scout it again. Probably a pain in the ass.
On the other hand, scouts are cheap ;)
In other news, Necromancers are weird! I have no idea what I’m doing! Well, I mean, besides murder. I’m doing lots of murder.
Hey everyone in my PBEM - just an update, I plan on going into the Open Beta for the new patch tonight, which I think means everyone else will have to in order to keep playing the PBEM, or so it sounds like from the note at the top of the patch notes page. Is that a problem for anyone? Is anyone not going to jump into the open beta?
