Those Explorminate tips included one about just running away to another area of the map in that case. I still only have two apprentices and one hero with some really nice mine income coming in. No circle mages after me yet(although I pissed one off a bunch). Can I ask how far along you are?
I’m currently 16 hours into my initial playthrough (Artificer) and although I’m doing fairly well, I still feel somewhat weak overall. I have 2 apprentices and a hero and 2 and a half armies. My hero has a couple of tier 2 units in it but all the rest are still tier 1. I just managed to clear a bridge being blocked (by a tier 2 army) with an apprentice (with tier 1 units). I just moved my tower for the first time (really cool mechanic) and have set up shop near the Shaper’s Secret tower (which contains an absolutely brutal tier 4 unit, btw).
As in most tactical games like this, combined arms are key. In that bridge battle, my army had 2 melee, an archer, a shaman to heal and the apprentice can raise a demon as another throwaway melee. It costs him two stacks of bleed to call the demon but he got the Cleanse ability on one of his level ups so now he can clear the bleed in the same turn that he calls the demon. Enemies really hate that demon so he makes for a really valuable meat-shield while my ranged (archers, shaman, apprentice) units are firing away. I also stuck a spider web glyph on my archers so they can web melee enemies in place on hit so they can’t get near me until their buddies are dead. I love the tactical diversity you can have with this.
Overall, this game is so great. At 16 hours into an AoW3 game, I’d be in mop-up mode. In this game, I feel like I’m hanging on by a thread still. I love how the quests and accomplishments you have to achieve before advancing further in power serve as a gate to regulate what typically becomes a mid-game rush and then a tedious end-game slog to kill everything with your OP stack or two. This feels completely different and compelling at all times.
There is so much to learn and do in the game it’s just amazing. It’s so different from other 4X games I’ve played in many ways and I love it for that. It’s a breath of originality in the genre and very welcome. I was initially worried that a single map wouldn’t make for much in the way of replay value but I now think I was wrong there. This is not a game you can just cruise to victory in your very first run and I love it for that. The map is also absolutely huge and I’ve only uncovered a tiny fraction of it so far. I look forward to learning the ins and outs of all the mechanics, spells, tower abilities, etc. and playing as the other classes and customizing my own class.
To sum up, this game may not be for everybody but it sure as hell is for me. I love it.
Not sure how to answer how far along I am, but…
I captured one of the big all fire nodes and then met a necromancer circle mage who was nice enough to me (as an alchemist). He just told me to stay out of his territory which I did and he has left me alone.
Then some orc circle mage showed up and told me to piss off (in so many words) and then captured some of my lodges and my smaller all fire node. He is just running around causing trouble. So that is how far I am in the game. I have 3 apprentices, and 1 hero, but really just have 2 effective armies because I can not afford anything more.
Interesting, so I think a bit ahead of me in other regards. I’m just now melding with a big node. Are you mixing summons and hired troops to spread the maintenance? How built up are your tower structures?
Just curious, I’m running my three stacks without too much issue and I’m curious what the difference is. Currently exploiting mines is really boosting my gold.
Yeah, I’m pretty much with you on all of this. The magic hasn’t worn off for me yet. And I also got that tome that let’s you summon demons at the cost of bleed and it makes that stack punch way above it’s weight. Like you said, the enemies love to target the demons and I can pretty safely summon three demons as long as I can do some healing to the summoner.
I have to say that I’m pretty surprised that Dastactic is hasn’t been covering this game at all. I thought he’d be all over it. Maybe he doesn’t know about it? Hopefully, someone decent like Splattercat will cover/review it in the future. It deserves more eyes on it than it’s getting.
He’s way too busy with Dwarf Fortress at the moment. ;)
and Gladius. It is interesting he isn’t covering it though, as yeah, seems like he’d be all over it.
I think they discussed the game on the last episode of the Explorminate podcast, which Das was on. So he should be aware of it!
I lost a recruitment slot on my tower. Now I can only train one unit at a time. Does anyone have any idea what caused this?
Did you move your domain? The little villages on the map tend to grant extra recruitment slots. I think I’ve maybe seen one of the week bonuses being an extra recruitment slot as well, so maybe you had that and the week changed?
Maybe. I dunno. It just disappeared over the end turn. Maybe I moved something somewhere.
And it’s a fair complaint that those can just disappear without warning. I don’t think there is anything that breaks down where your hiring and crafting slots are coming from and no notification when a new one is added or removed. There are a few information gaps in the game like that which are annoying.
Are there any shops where you can buy crafting materials? I need a lot of blue stuff, preferably quailty 2 or better and it is rare to find any blue stuff let alone another with 2 or more dots.
Also does anyone understand the Zacharias Menagerie quest? I have spent gold there a few times, but nothing ever happens. Am I just wasting my money?
Lots of shops sell things that are usable in crafting. I’ve found a couple on the map, but each city has at least one shop that’ll sell that stuff too. Generally starting at the second relation level.
I’m going to repeat my recommendation to drop an Apprentice Lodge next to Sevenkeeps. The buildings(I assume you are always guaranteed at least some of them to spawn?) are permanent and have nice bonuses. The reputation boost with the city is actually probably too strong. I got to max rep with the city in a hurry and did the quest associated with it. Now I have this in my domain
I am working on that. You need max rep with them.
Did your Sevenkeeps spawn with any Inn buildings? They give free rep each turn in your domain.
Yes I have those in my domain and like I said, I am working on it. I have two places that give rep and gold in my domain. Its just going to take time.
One more voice in the crowd that this is good enough to be really fun. I like to think I’d say it even if GOG hadn’t made it the giveaway pair, but it reminds me a lot of Lords of Magic (though obviously with a lot of other things incorporated as well). If I have one complaint so far it’s that the autoresolve function for battles is wildly pessimistic, so I am ending up in a lot of fights that are pretty trivial. Either way I played eight hours yesterday and stayed up far too late (…the only way to get eight hours with a child is to steal it from sleep, I guess), so it’s doing something right.
Thanks for the tip! I hadn’t realized that some buildings have reputation yields, even though the map makes clear that some do.
I’d like to see the Planetfall system where you can autoresolve and then if you don’t like the results you can choose to play manually. I like that the game tells you who is at risk of dying if you autoresolve, but I’m still very hesitant to lose anyone.
Well shit, I’m 12 hours into my Artificer first game and I JUST realized that you get lesser/greater/whatever is higher glyphs not by increasing how many essence dots you put into the glyph but by what metal base you’re using! I guess that explains why sky iron only has one more dot than the copper, that isn’t the important thing its doing. Well that’s going to open up a bunch of new glyphs that I just assumed were not craftable.
Another discovery I made while playing today is that you can edit your units by clicking on them in the pre-battle screen. That gives you an opportunity to equip items or glyphs or do any level ups based on the enemies you are going to be facing.