What about not bee-lining for Follower and instead trying to roll with Enslaved as a status? I know the penalties are pretty big but you can get some promotions for orc units that really take advantage of it. (I’m curious if it would work out.)
The game needs to lose the 1 Spell Researched = 1 Spell Unlocked mechanic. After the early game I stop being able to make interesting choices about what spell to research, and usually pick whatever’s cheapest so I can get another choice as soon as possible.
Well, I think the first thing I’ll be bee-lining to in mentalism is the Reputation spell because that will allow me to get to revered with Orgash much more quickly. However, the closest I could get to Orgash as a starting location was Alluvyan so we’ll see how long it takes me to get over there.
I know getting to the Follower spell may take me a long time so I’ll leverage slaver abilities and roll with Enslaved until then.
Agreeing that this design choice feels odd. The overall game design feels - to me - masterful, but this aspect is at best puzzling, since much of the time, it reduces the research into admin i.e., I have to click buttons, but I am not making choices. Even if there are two or three potentials to research at each instance, the choice feels over-simple and less well aligned with many other choices. Maybe a streamlining too far?
Seems like something they could just have higher tower levels upgrade so by the end you have max 5 spell choices or whatever. Or abandon the mechanic entirely.
It’s actually the same research system that AoW3 and MoM uses. So I guess they felt it was therefore good enough.
MoM actually gave you several (5?) choices at any one time, so there was increased agency. But, in truth, the same downside remained – many times your best play was to just research the cheapest spell so as to move along to the good stuff.
Yeah, it’s pretty much the same in Eo. I just started my run and I had a choice between researching Wisp, Endurance or the Aid spell. So, 3 choices to start the game. You end up getting more choices than that once you start getting free spells from things like books or quests. That said, I usually go for the cheapest ones first unless I really want something specific. I do that in AoW3 as well.
To contribute some knowledge to you folks, I have been experimenting with the Summon Golem spell and here are my results:
All tier 3 units have 4 mana/turn upkeep and the tier 4 has 10 mana/turn. All units are Fantastic (no exp/no level gain) except Blood Golem which is Undead, with the usual Undead traits.
Mountain Copper Node - T3 - Stone Golem - Physical Resistance, Earthquake - Rating: solid tier 3
Rubble Node - T3 - Stone Golem, same as above (this is the only duplicate AFAIK)
Gold Node - T3 - Flaming Construction - Elemental Resistance, Burning attacks - Rating: very solid tier 3
Sky Iron Node - T3 - Fire Golem - Elemental Resistance, Inferno, Flawless Defense - Rating: top end of tier 3
Corrupted Adamantium Node - T3 - Blood Golem - Self Healing, Resurrects if you win, blood AOE dmg on death - Rating: top end of tier 3
Crystal Node - T3 - Ice Golem - Elemental Resistance, Glacial Freeze, general massivity - Rating: above Flaming Construct, below Fire Golem/Blood Golem
Adamantium Node - T4 - Shaper Golem - Eye Lazer, Defend & Recharge ability, very tough and mean - Rating: The Lord God Cometh (Titan level, IMO)
You forgot elf at the top! They only get the one unit but it is imho the best T2 unit in the game. Got some mean upgrades and if you can give it the glyph where attacks can entangle, it’ll stop anything it doesn’t kill.
I am definitely in for buying the Elf DLC when it is released.
Caveat, not yet announced, uh, in fact, as far as I know, no such plans, but still, I hope that if we just talk about it like it is a thing, it will happen.
Also trolls.
I did not know this! Fire golems are very nice. Definately makes earth magic more appealing.
Since we’re doing tips, is it me or is throw sand the most overpowered ability in the game (relative to how hard it is to get)? -25% damage doesnt sound that great but the impact is actually much larger.I’m not sure why, maybe it reduces damage before armor/willpower?
Throwing sand is much better than it sounds. The Earth Shaper ability to provide +50% physical resistance is also a great one. Hero’s that can summon demons or create undead are also very useful to mitigate damage to your own troops.
I wanted to mention that there is a reroll mod available. I had asked upthread if there was a way to control the selections you get on level up and this mod is the closest thing. It’s actually quite good in that it specifically fixes my biggest beef with the game: a “crappy level up” where you get no good options. The reroll mod causes the base # of choices to increase from 2 to 4, and also lets you reroll the level up options as many times as you want. I just played a game with it, limiting my usage to rerolling the crappy level ups and it was excellent. You could probably use it to custom-build every unit but that was a bit too micro for me. But just ending that sad feeling of the crappy level up was huge.
I kind of want to try getting all my units healing III and then abusing death march
Yeah, I’ve started using this also. It really does give you more control over your unit builds.
I’m currently playing as a mentalist slaver. Well, I’m trying to. The game makes it difficult to get there at the start. I started with the usual goblins and then the first earth apprentice. I thought my second apprentice would be a mentalist but it gave me earth and nature wardens instead so I passed to look for one that fits the theme better. I haven’t gotten any slaver mentalism spells so far, either.
I did make it over to Orgash and started working on rep there. Since I don’t have the reputation spell yet, that’s also going slow. I’ve just now gotten enough rep to start buying enslaved units, so maybe soon?
I did get something very interesting as the reward for doing the People’s Power quest there. The orcs asked me what my goal was and I chose the “power” option. When the quest was completed they pointed me to a large Allfire node that popped up and said it was unknown to the circle mages. Sure enough, I did not have to fight any circle units for it and was able to start merging with it immediately without having any domain there or having to bring my tower over there. I’m assuming it will not cause my rep to go down with the circle once it’s merged. This is frankly, quite awesome as I haven’t even unlocked the large nodes yet.
I’ve done that quest several times and this is the first time I’ve gotten this result. The game is still surprising me.
On the topic of Throw Sand I think I know why it is so effective. It costs 1 Focus, and 1-3 actions and it fires off once for every action you have, and that includes both the ranged damage effect and applying Blindness. If Blindness stacks, that would explain the large damage reductions people are seeing: a 3 action attack would reduce damage by 75%. Sometimes the text specifies whether things stack or not, but it does not say for Blindness so I’m not sure.
In other topics, which Circle mages do you folks hate most/least? The biggest aggro dick IMO is Hokan. That dude has no off switch, no quests to gain rep and just attacks the crap out of you. OTOH, tooling up to crush his undead is not that hard so I often adopt a “Fuck You Hokan” strategy. Uram and Gor and Raith are all also pretty aggro but don’t seem as insane as Hokan. The “goodie-good” Mages can be annoying as well. Ianna can fuXXor your rep with Human cities and Isgrim with Dwarf cities and Yria can be a bossy petulant pest. I have no particular opinion on Rohen or Undergast.
Isgrim mines everything he can get his hands on so is painful if playing artificer. I haven’t seen any other circle mage being as aggressive at harvesting.
So I’ve been playing custom difficulty in the “balanced” range, working my way up. This game, I’m playing as a standard Artificer, with the stack difficulty turned down to weakest (to make the early game easy and quick), the world progression turned up to “Keep Up or Perish” and the enemy mage stacks set to “Unfair Stacks”. This provides a very solid late game challenge.
In this game, I met Hokan early and he was his usual dickish self but i set up a defensive post at Sevenkeeps and just kept him off my back whilst I explored the other parts of the map, and wiped out Raithe. While I was exploring, Hokan kept attacking and getting rebuffed, losing rep until he was at war with me. Before I could turn on him, Raithe disrupted my Allfire nodes and just generally got in my way so I attacked him. The fight with Raithe took awhile and during that war, I got a message that Hokan was sending a Titan to attack my tower. Fortunately I had scout wisps north of Sevenkeeps and so I saw this:
Yep, that’s a Titan alright. 390 hit points on that sucker. And Hokan’s stack is weighing in at 1,265 power points (!)
Dang, I should have screenshotted my A-stack b/c it’s going to go up there and kick Hokan’s ass. I think it’s a slightly lower power score (1200-ish) but it’s a lean mean undead killin’ machine with Elven Rangers with Holy Weapons and a Tiara’s Priestess with Aonir’s Smile and the 10 point white damage boost. My B-Stack has two Alchemists with Sacred Water so I’m going to smack Hokan like the sad little punk he is (did I mention he’s a dick?)
Anyhow, at Keep up or Perish progression and Unfair Stacks, even with a weaker stacks baseline, the late game serves up some opposition with these settings. Its going to be epic.