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[Elemental: Fallen Enchantress] - Beta 3 available: 270+ page changelog?!
Archonex
No hard feelings, right?Registered User regular
No hard feelings, right?Registered User regular
Heads up: If you bought War of Magic in 2010 you have this game for free, and can play it now. You can get it from here: http://download.stardock.com
So people may remember Elemental: War of Magic. It kind of sucked on coming out. It's a fairly decent game now, but the stigma is there, and Fallen Enchantress completely blows it out of the water.
Fallen Enchantress is essentially a two year long apology for War of Magic from Stardock. If you bought War of Magic at release or before you can get it for free and play it right now. They brought in guys who made Civilization and the Fall from Heaven 2 (One of the most popular mods from Civ 4, and a game like Master of Magic all to itself: http://www.moddb.com/mods/fall-from-heaven-ii) to design this monstrosity.
A bunch of magazines and reviewers that ripped Elemental apart have already come out saying that Fallen Enchantress is pretty awesome. Most recently, IGN gave it a fairly good bump (http://pc.ign.com/articles/122/1222236p1.html). I've only sunk my teeth into it for a few hours now, and I can say that it's going to stand on its two feet if it doesn't get ripped apart by people who write it off automatically. It's also fucking hard. More on that later though.
What specifically is Elemental Fallen Enchantress?
Fallen Enchantress is a sort of sequel to War of Magic. War of Magic was meant to be a spiritual successor to the famed Master of Magic, an old and beloved game by many strategy fans. Unfortunately, War of Magic fell short. Despite having ten or so factions, there were really only two, the Kingdoms and Empires. Complicating that, the unit, items, and spells were bland, the AI was bad, and the world was uninteresting. To be quite short with it, War of Magic sucked a load of donkey dick. It's gotten better, but they haven't been able to shake off the overall blandness of it. Fallen Enchantress fixes all of this and then some.
So what makes it so awesome?
It takes the concepts that Master of Magic, Fall from Heaven, War of Magic, and Civilization have and expands on them. Alot. It's difficult to explain, but Fallen Enchantress is basically a sort of 4X game where you lead your unique faction in a fantasy post-apocalyptic environment where a gigantic spell broke the world. Everything is dead, there are mile long holes in the ground that lead to what appears to be Hell, and generally the world is like some sort of twisted mix of Fallout, Mad Max, and Master of Magic when you first get started in a game. It's you against the remnants of a broken world, other empires, and possibly eventually even the gods themselves. You have to build cities, outposts and other stuff to expand your influence.
Your channeler, the leader of your nation, which you can even personally design, can resurrect what's essentially a dead world by expanding their region of influence. But doing that will eventually put you in contact with other empires, and even very nasty monsters. You start out with just your channeler, maybe a hero or two, and a group of huddled, frightened refugees. Eventually, if you live, you'll build up to leading massive armies and a kingdom/empire that may or may not be high or low fantasy depending on your faction and the settings you generated for that map.
Y'see, on that "if you live" thing, for those familiar with Elemental: War of Magic, the old "safe" world is gone now. The world is very dangerous, and maybe it's just my luck, but the game seems to have a sort of "Galactic Civilizations 2" sort of AI, where the game would always make sure the galaxy descended into batshit insanity in one way or another. Only it's been expanded. Doing good? Maybe your influence expands over that Swamp Dragon's lair, destroying it, and sending it rampaging about your lands. Maybe you start next to an area of one of the powers of the world (More on that later.), and suddenly you're in contest with an old god of lovecraftian or just plain god-like proportions. These gods have their own regions of influence, like Empires and Kingdoms, so they're nasty. They also aren't counted against the number of AI players either. And that's before you meet other factions, which balance their opinion off of you like they do in Galactic Civilizations.
The world, to put it simply, is much more interesting. Carving out an empire for yourself requires thought, daring actions, and some luck. At one point, I actually found myself cobbling together a "raid" of heroes and infantry to try and take on some giant elder god in the depths of his domain, while my Sovereign was pulling a World of Warcraft and quibbling with a nearby empire over territory to the north of my land with their own army.
The AI has been beefed up on that front, if you run on normal (The game has Gal Civ style AI, you can make it artificially stupid, but it's pretty damn smart otherwise.) as well. Also, did I mention that all the factions are now unique? Every one is different from the others, now, with unique defining features and traits that influence how you and the AI will prefer to play the faction.
Here's a quick picture of the world. Players familiar with War of Magic will recognize a ton of new stuff. That purple land, for instance, is plains. Only they've rotted with whatever that broke the world being cast. You can restore them, and it's a good idea to do so. Food is no longer an object resource. Rather, it's now tied into tiles. So places like that are very valuable, as they're one of the places where you can easily get yourself something for your civilization to eat.
Okay, so what does it have in terms of features?
Off of the top of my head:
An entirely new system of gameplay. Speaking from experience, if you go into this and try to play it like War of Magic, you will be crushed. It's much more involved.
A new system to build cities. Cities are now, depending on the map (Which is customizable to many different variants.) a very rare and precious thing. You can now build outposts to help with expanding influence.
An insane amount of unit customization. Gone is the main complaint of War of Magic. How you build your units determines victory. There are a crap-ton of traits you can pick up, ranging from things like getting a damage bonus against over-leveled enemies, to stuff that lets a unit move faster, to stat bonuses, to just about anything imaginable. That's before you get into gear, too. A person who builds their army better will crush a larger force if it isn't built smart. I'll put a picture of the trait system down below.
Gear is now more then just a case of "is this better then ____"? Spears, for instance, are a weapon you can research early on. Which makes sense, since they just involve sticking something sharp on a piece of wood and handing it to the nearest refugee. They have a huge advantage when it comes to hitting highly defensive targets, since they penetrate armor by something like 60%.
Magic is a present thing in the world now. You can determine whether or not the world is "low" or "high" fantasy at map creation, and it makes a difference. This includes an expansion to the magic system. Magic now has damage types that can be resisted. Is an empire using lots of fire magic? Research plate armor and imbue it with spells to resist the touch of fire. Then slap them on some mounted knights and watch them run rough-shod over armies until the AI counters by switching tactics.
Magic isn't "researched" through a spell-book menu. You can research some spells through trees. But mostly, it looks like you either play archaeologist out in the world, or get it by leveling up.
A vastly expanded world. The world's much more detailed now. Music, tiles, aesthetics, monsters, lots of goddamn fucking horrifying monsters that will eat your face. It's a magical wasteland, and it will suck to be your character at times.
Much better AI. The AI actually thinks. Given that guys from Civilization and Fall from Heaven are on this project, is that any surprise? Also, they upgraded the monsters. Lord forbid if a Darkling Shaman leads a horde of Darklings into your territory early on. They can use magic, and will abuse it freely.
Every faction is unique. Gone is the whole "Oh, well, you're a Kingdom and you have ____ traits", or "You're an Empire, you have ____ traits" thing from the last game. Now, each faction has its own backstory, traits, and method of dress and methodology. Tarthans are basically what would have happened if Spartacus had lead the slaves out of Magic Rome before it got blown straight to hell. And it shows, they make for great frontiersmen and warriors. Likewise, the Capitar are money makers.
Massive minor factions. Occasionally, you'll stumble on an area called the "Wild Lands". These are massive tracts of lands lead by a "minor" faction. And by minor, I mean they're lead by some obscenely powerful minor sovereign like a fallen god who has an army that could push your shit in. Taking them out or completing the objective of this area gives their lands to you, with all that might come with it. Did I mention they have nasty armies, and it seems some of them will gladly send them out to ravage nearby empires and kingdoms? Because I learned that the hard way, myself.
A much better graphics system. Everything looks much better now. Everyone also looks much more unique. There's also a ton of new awesome items. My current not-sodomized-by-monsters sovereign is running around with a badass cloak, a pair of green and purple metal gauntlets, and a fairly swanky looking set of leather armor I yanked out of ruins and lairs of monsters. Contrast this with the blandness of War of Magic.
A customizable map generator. Want to play on a normal world? Go ahead. Want to play on a world with so many chasms and abysses in it that it looks like swiss cheese? Go ahead. Want to play on a magically ruined desert world that wouldn't look out of place in DnD's "Dark Sun"? Go ahead. You get the idea.
It's very moddable. Very. It seems they're following in the steps of Gal Civ 2 on this front, in that you can hop in and create new stuff quickly and easily, given that the game is only in late/mid beta, and there's already huge mods out.
A ton of expansions to the gameplay. Also, a ton of expansions to the monsters. This leads to an absurd amount of depth to the game. I actually had to decide whether or not I wanted to try and assassinate certain heroes in my realm, since they would only join empires, and there was an empire that was starting to push on my kingdom at that point.
Probably much more that i'm forgetting.
Pretty Pictures:
An image of my current sovereign, having looted some armor from a nearby lair and ruins.
You can see what I mean about army building here. This is a list of traits for Tarth players at the start of the game.
GODDAMN MONSTERS. EVERYWHERE. Also, a look at the new in-game codex. It's sort of like the codex from Fall from Heaven 2. Note how much longer the list of monsters is compared to War of Magic. You'll notice that in-game, too. Trust me.
A preview of the new sovereign and kingdom selection page. Looking at it you can see part of the Magnar's traits. IE: Being evil slaving bastards. They actually benefit greatly from razing cities to the ground.
And a fairly dry screenshot showing off world generation as it stands in the current beta.
An image of my current sovereign, having looted some armor from a nearby lair and ruins.
You can see what I mean about army building here. This is a list of traits for Tarth players at the start of the game.
GODDAMN MONSTERS. EVERYWHERE. Also, a look at the new in-game codex. It's sort of like the codex from Fall from Heaven 2. Note how much longer the list of monsters is compared to War of Magic. You'll notice that in-game, too. Trust me.
A preview of the new sovereign and kingdom selection page. Looking at it you can see part of the Magnar's traits. IE: Being evil slaving bastards. They actually benefit greatly from razing cities to the ground.
And a fairly dry screenshot showing off world generation as it stands in the current beta.
So how do I get it?
If you purchased War of Elemental in 2010 or before, it's free. You have access to the development beta that's going on right now. If not, you can pre-purchase it and get access to the beta for $39.95. Apparently pre-purchasing is also getting you "goodies" for those who made a good faith investment, too.
Either way, you can get the beta off of Stardock's main page.
And just because I have it available, here's the short pre-release blurb they've got going on the main page:
Randomly generated maps.
10 unique factions.
In-depth unit and character design.
Tactical battles.
Rich, story-driven campaign.
Incredible replay-ability.
Takes advantage of the latest hardware.
Massive modding support.
Full featured map editor.
Over 100 new spells and magical items.
Over 50 new unique quests.
From the makers of Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire.
Archonex on
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It sounds like they took MP out, which is disappointing
Fortunately that price tag's enough to keep me at bay. For now...
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It's really good. Has a lot more character to it then War of Magic ever did. Still in beta, though, so it's somewhat buggy.
Just got done butchering some Samara ripoffs from "The Ring". There was an evil well in the forest near my starting point that they spawned from. Last guys I sent to clear the Butchermen out got slaughtered. So I came back with my beefy Sovereign and proceeded to put the fear of god into the undead after they decided to raze a nearby mine to the ground. Then all hell broke loose as some giant mutated dragon came wandering into my lands, and I had to reload to an earlier save since I was playing with a very expansionist strategy.
Yeah, they appear to be going with a Gal Civ II approach to the game. Where the AI and SP is enough to cover for that. And the AI in Gal Civ 2 was good enough that you didn't need players.
To explain for people who never played it, Galactic Civilizations II had probably the best 4x AI to date. Just read this play-through of a game by a reviewer to see what I mean. It was written by some guy from PCGamer back when they did quality play-throughs.
The result is that the reviewer does a "Let's Play" where he designed a hilariously dickish species that trolls the hell out of the galaxy. The other races galaxy react accordingly while inventing Machiavellian plans to win the game and/or use the player race (As he inadvertently made himself the one obstacle to victory for a few races by being such a dick.) to their own advantage.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/161570/blog/galciv-2-war-report-final-entry/?site=pcg
Not going into the particulars of it. But one AI faction basically faked the galaxy out to its own advantage. The Drengin lead a proxy war that they never wanted to win against the player. By doing so the Human faction (Not the player.) couldn't claim a diplomatic victory, since not everyone was allied. If the Drengin wiped out the player, then since the Humans had united everyone into a mega-alliance, they'd win automatically.
Likewise, if the Drengin split off from the mega-alliance, the Yor and Humans (Basically the Federation and Borg in a different setting.) alliance would have decimated them. So they had to deal with the player trolling the hell out of them with offers to buy all their assets for 1 credit all match.
So they tried to keep the player as a sort of "hostile protectorate", where the player faction had no real space capacity by virtue of the Drengin armada blowing it out of the sky. Throughout this, the player was trolling the hell out of the Drengin without realizing what was going on, merely assuming the AI was incompetent. Said trolling included offering peace in exchange for every planet, tech, and ship the Drengin had for 1 credit.
The Drengin were not amused. But apparently declared peace for awhile to focus on building up their armies to take on the Not-Federation/Not-Borg alliance. Then immediately went "oh shit", when the Terrans started to make diplomatic overtures to the player faction, and declared war again. This was preceded by the player faction, unbeknown to the Drengin, trolling the hell out of the Terrans. So the Drengin really had nothing to worry about.
In the end, the whole galaxy was gearing up for a massive war. The Terrans had built intelligently, countering the designs of the favored Drengin ships. While the Drengin were relying on swarm tactics. When the Terrans finally declared war on the player faction as they went for a tech victory, the Drengin stopped fucking around (Much to the surprise of the player.), and let off a lot of frustration they had with the player trolling them, sending an absurd number of ships their way to try and claim some planets before the Terrans got them.
Funnily enough, both AI factions were planning to continue the game after the player was dead. Which would have ended the game. Which is both brilliant and a bit hilarious.
The whole thing really needs to be read, if only for the hilarity of it at the end.
If they get the AI to that point, the game will be a classic. It might already be getting there, I don't know. But it's hard to tell since something keeps coming out of the deep wilds and tearing apart my kingdom before I can get on my feet. I've noticed at least one other faction having the same problem. Usually because someone woke something nasty up, which proceeded to rampage all over a region of the gameworld.
So it looks like I'm eligible to get Fallen Enchantress for free, which is very cool. Though so far it seems the serial number they give for it isn't able to be activated in Impulse. Weird.
I loved Master of Magic, spent *so* much time with that game...
I don't believe Fallen Enchantress is out on there yet. It's currently in an open beta as they develop it, like a lot of indie games are. I'm guessing they're wanting to show people that it isn't going to suck like War of Magic did.
I added a link to the top of my original post saying where you can download the game.
As I understand it, they are not releasing it on Impulse. If you got to Stardock.com (use Impluse login) -> My account -> Downloads, you should see access to the beta. I could be wrong about an Impulse release when the game is finished, but you can definitely only get the beta direct from Stardock.
I guess the code I see is for when you're installing the beta, you have to supply the key for the beta to work. Which is fine. Means I don't have to keep Impulse running in the background all the time...
Impulse doesn't need to be running to play your games. You only need it for installing and updating stuff (and maybe uninstalling; I'm not sure). I think you could technically uninstall the client entirely and still be able to play any games you already have set up, though I've never tried.
How it got started
Umber decided to declare on me out of the blue. Presumably because i'm a kingdom. Umber, being an empire, hates kingdoms. So they sent me a message basically saying "Hey, fuck you, kingdom!" and proceeded to roll a huge stack of units into one of my core towns out of nowhere. My plan for building my kingdom is based around the concept of a division of cities. Cities in pacified areas are considered "core" towns. Cities that are not pacified are "frontier" towns. The goal is to pacify every city so that they're safe enough to be treated like a core town: IE, lightly defended and focused around production, not defense.
Obviously, my early game core cities were undefended since I had moved my army off to clear out a portion of the frontier I had just opened up.
Notably, Umber was the most powerful discovered faction at the time. They had a faction strength of 32, while I, the second most powerful, had 25. Faction strengths were low, because everyone was still trying to bring back civilization to the map. So just about no one is using metals in their troops yet, for instance. Hell, agriculture improvements are fairly rare. This plays into things later.
This was smart of them. Unfortunately for Umber, they were still working with clubs. I was working with leather armor, spears, shields, and plenty of metal weaponry thanks to an aggressive plan to not only colonize some of the nastiest places near my territories, but aggressively purge them of any monsters that could threaten my cities, or the only other kingdom faction nearby, Altar.
Altar by the way, seems to appreciate the gesture. Their sovereign (Who gets a ton of benefits from basically acting like a generic RPG hero --- IE: Doing quests and killing monsters.) periodically rolls through my territory alone and rips anything that looks like a monster apart. Our relationship is listed as "close". Which is a far cry from the string of "war" and "hostiles" I get from Magnar and Umber.
Unfortunately, I didn't know where the hell this massive army came from, or how to strike at them to stop them from rolling over me with another massive army in the future. Making things worse, an army of spearmen armed with a simple leather cuirass, a wooden spear, and not much else, didn't have that much defense against a group of Orcs trying to bring a club down on their head. I had neglected to give my spearmen a full set of body armor in lieu of getting more of them out there to swarm some of the more horrific shit that was plaguing the frontier of my kingdom, like a house sized giant albino spider that periodically decided that my pioneers made for tasty snacks.
So we were, all things considered, about even.
How it progressed
A horde of spearmen will, given that spears have armor penetration, fuck up just about anything stupid enough to go after them that just so happens to be a heavily armored monster. You just need enough of them to survive long enough to let them get hits in. They don't do so well however against a screaming horde of suicidally deranged desert orcs brandishing logs. They have neither armor, on account of being half naked, nor a sense of self preservation, much like my brave spearmen (Later renamed and rebuilt to become a sort of order of rangers to patrol the edges of my kingdoms, since i'm a nerd.).
So it was my tech and spells, versus their sheer numbers in a battle for one of my core cities. And my tech wouldn't do jack-shit to help me until I could roll out units geared towards fighting actual people. Meanwhile, a huge stack of units was sitting a mere one city away from my capital, of which there were roads established for easy walking to each both ways.
I began mustering all of my defensive units I could spare into a giant army. It all got very Lord of the Rings all of a sudden, with every hero I had assembling an army and riding to aid Hope, while my sovereign prepared to unleash a shit-storm on the city that I had lost. Apparently, Umber decided to amp up their military production as well, as their power suddenly shot up to 39. I assume they're rushing construction of more zerg-style military units, as I haven't encountered them yet.
I managed to catch their sovereign out with a small group of the previously aforementioned screaming lunatic desert orcs. I slaughtered them whole-sale, and killed a hero. In War of Magic, when you kill a hero, they're gone for good. In this game, they get an injury that's fairly debilitating. It shows up as a negative trait. Not sure how to get rid of them, or even if you can. But it was a win nonetheless. At the time, I had no idea why the hell the Sovereign was risking traipsing around alone in the wilderness in a warzone. I'd figure that out later.
Unfortunately, with their Sovereign down, he teleported back to the nearest town---The one they conquered from me. Attacking it just became an utter bitch, since now they had spell-power to boot. So now it was my tech advantage (That gave me nothing when fighting this particular strategy.) and spells, versus their hordes of lunatic orcs and spells. Fuck.
So, I fell back. As one of my armies was heading to reinforce a city with a road connecting it to my formerly held town, I noticed a region barrier that matched Umber's color. Turns out there was an outpost on the border of a desert near my territory. It belonged to Umber. I tore the outpost down to keep them from getting some mana and horses to make cavalry (Last thing I needed was a bunch of lunatic orcs with horses running my men down.) then turned my attention back to the city they had taken. By this point I had two more groups of spearmen built, which had joined my massive army.
Saying the fuck with it, despite their overall power out-distancing mine by twice what I had, I attacked. But not before catching the Sovereign outside the city again with some of the garrison force, trying to sneak past my city to the east. I gave him a suitable thrashing for his temerity. This knocked Umber down a few points in terms of faction strength. Which meant that while they may have a massive army lurking somewhere in the desert, they sure as shit didn't have as much power on their frontier, my lands.
Turns out that city militia come equipped with axes. Which are a metal weapon. Which fuck everything both sides could field easily at this point up. And they had a unit of them defending my city. Previously those militia were my militia. They single-handedly tore through four units of spearmen before I could figure out what was going on to put them down.
Luck was on my side, however. The battle map put a lake in such a place that it kept their units from zerging me. So they had to send in highly expendable and weak club-wielding lunatics only a few at a time. Nonetheless, they, and the militia wore my spearmen down through sheer attrition. The Umber sovereign sat in the back all fight with one HP. Occasionally he'd pull himself out of the puddle of blood I had put him in to try and counter my hastes with a slow. My sovereign spent most of the army battle putting hastes on all of my units. Which was helped by the fact that I had cast a self-regeneration spell on many of them before the fight started.
The battle ended with every member of my army dead. Except for my sovereign. Irane proceeded to look at the last three units, look at the insane number of corpses decorating the ground, laugh at all them, and then tear the survivors apart with her bare hands. Which were on fire. Because I had built a fire node and specialized her into being a magic user. Explosions occurred and lots of burnt orcs went flying.
Victory.
What and why did this all happen?
Turns out the little peninsula I had assumed was the end of my territory was a connector to a huge desert. Umber had started there, and Umber had adopted a far different strategy for colonizing it then I had adopted for colonizing the more friendlier areas (Relatively speaking. Giant spiders and panthers made of shadows and concentrated death aren't exactly friendly.) I had started in.
You see, in Fallen Enchantress, pioneers are your city builders. However, they have a second option. They can build something called an "outpost". This is handy, because you can't build cities everywhere now. And if you say, start in a godless hell-hole of a desert, this becomes very handy. You may not match other nations that spam a ton of cities, but you can still claim the resources by making an outpost that links up to your city, sitting in the middle of said godless hell-hole.
It also explained why the heck Umber was using the "waves on waves of men" strategy, and seemed to be fielding men with the equivalent armor of a hobo. Deserts are, in my experience from a few play-throughs now, not friendly places. They're filled to brim with nasty mobs, have no places to really build cities at, unless you luck out and find a coastal region or an oasis of sorts, and are generally hell for someone to colonize early on. I assume this gets easier as you get spells to terraform the place, if they exist.
Their men were in rags because in order to pacify the region, they had to send waves on waves of men to take down the horrible monsters that were eating them up by the dozen. The lack of places to build a city also meant that their research was stunted compared to mine.
So that's what they did. Dozens of outposts were constructed. They all lead back to one or two cities at most, supplying them with goods. The whole place was basically the high fantasy equivalent of Mad Max and Fallout. They didn't really have control of the desert, but they could enforce some measure of security through spending lots of manpower in zerging the occasional direct threat to their critical outposts, and especially their cities down.
Unfortunately, if they wanted to improve their situation, they needed to find a way to get more cities in a much more hospitable area. Which lead to them running smack dab into the blind side of my core provinces I had established. They already didn't like me because of my faction type, being a kingdom, so they had no problem declaring war on me to get access to the resources I had that they didn't. They then proceeded to run in and gank one of my core cities as fast as possible.
This also explains why they kept trying to sneak their sovereign past a heavily guarded core city that acted as a chokepoint to Altar and Magnar.
See, there's a frontier city not too far to the south of that city. It runs through a forest populated by tank sized black widow spiders that I never had, and certainly now, don't have the manpower to spare to clear out. Past the forest lies the city Barmen, which is undefended except for a single militia unit. It was far enough away on the other side of my kingdom, and the path to it was so insanely hostile, that retaking it meant wouldn't be feasible to retake it given the threat of a giant post-apocalyptic orc empire sitting on my door-step.
Coincidentally, this also means that, since it was sitting on a 4 grain tile (The highest i've seen so far.), which was better then even the starter city you get, that it would be great for bolstering the research and income of the constantly besieged Umber states. So Umber desperately wanted it, even if it meant losing a few units and putting their leader into a state of stab induced agony every week.
I figured out what was going on after they sent a small unit consisting of one of the enemy heroes and a small mob of club wielding orcs. This guy was part of the original force that the Sovereign was leading that was decimated. He was also with the group when I took out the Umber sovereign a second time, and in the siege of the city, recuperating at the time. So he had more then a few injuries. In fact, he was pretty pathetic. He was concussed, amnesiac, and terrified of just about everything.
But how did they know this place was undefended? As I mentioned, it was on the far end of my empire opposite the Umber's post-apocalyptic desert. Was it cheating? No, and that's where the AI either, by luck, or intention, got tricky.
Y'see, prior to declaring war, everyone had units running around each others territory. I was the only one not poking around other factions territory. I stopped upon reaching their border of influence. In Fallen Enchantress, there's no "hey, get out of my territory" automatic removal of units feature. You can open talks and demand someone removes their units from your land, but otherwise, you're free to go where you want.
So while Umber was expanding through the desert, they had sent scouts, used for what they imply, ahead into my lands. They had scoped everything out. Then, when they declared war, they had a single scout unit hide out in the previously aforementioned forests populated by tank sized spiders. Periodically, it would poke its head out of the forest to check up on Barmen and see if I had moved units to defend it. I never did. Which meant it was ripe for the picking. After that, the scouts would retreat back into the forest and hope a giant spider didn't decide to eat the trio.
In short, those fuckers were sneaky.
All in all, i'm impressed by the AI so far. Either it's a large number of flukes going together, or the AI is legitimately smart. It specifically targeted weak links in my defenses, used reconaissance effectively, and, most importantly was thinking on a seriously high level strategic and tactical leve. If Umber had lucked out and not started in a slightly less decrepit hell-hole, they might have won by countering my tech advantage.
As it is, i'm gearing up for a trek into the desert. My spearmen are coming with me, and I have a new unit in production. My "Royal Guard", which is equipped with full leather armor, a nasty looking axe, and a shield. I also gave them a trait that lets them get experience 25% faster. Which means they're perfect for stabbing mans, and will get a ton of levels for every battle fought. This makes them perfect for a war of attrition in the desert. Or at least, as perfect as I can currently get my units without knowing more about the place.
You're right, it doesn't have to be running for the games, however when I got it (specifically for Elemental), the game was being updated like, every other day, so I had it open to be able to keep it up to date.
The factions are much more diverse too. They've adopted a Gal Civ style system of having each faction have unique units as you develop tech. My Tarthans have Firebrands, basically ex slaves/gladiators that fight much better against higher level units.
Other factions seem to use different units too. And they have their own little styles. Not sure if they adapt to other AI strategies, but it's possible.
Just got done wiping out the Magnar. After I finished taking the desert the Umber held, I noticed that Relias, the leader of the Altar, hadn't come around my territories to do the whole "JRPG hero" thing lately. Curious, I checked his power, and it was really low. Then I checked his foreign status. He was locked in a losing war with Magnar.
Conveniently, I was much more powerful then Magnar now, after having taken all of Umber's assets and converting them to my own. This is in contrast to before, where Magnar would call me every few turns to gloat about something and subtly imply he was going to conquer the world/better then me/re-enslave the Tarthans/whatever.
So I massed my troops up and prepared to take on Magnar, regearing my economy for war, despite not knowing how his army was set up. Then, I saw it.
Relias was making a last stand in his final city, his capital. He had rallied together a bunch of unarmored and lightly armored Altar infantry, and was basically barricading the place as best he could. Magnar had three stacks of units sitting right outside his border, massing up for a final push.
I decided that hitting him from behind would be a wonderful idea. Then I had an even better idea.
See, Relias likes me. We had standing trade treaties and regularly traded non aggression pacts. Which meant even if I was going to kick Magnar's smug ass up between his head, he still wouldn't get that pissed off at the blatant aggression. But what if I could make him not angry at all, and consider it a favor?
So I contacted him and offered to declare war on Magnar, with my units sitting right inside my area of influence, behind Magnar's massive armies. Then I saw just how much survival was worth to him. Five hundred political points. That is akin to a "never gonna happen" sort of political deal for the AI in the early to mid game. No one faction has that much to spend on something like that.
So I cut him a deal. Give me everything you have. All your diplomatic capital. All your money. And I will be the Don to your innocent shop-keeper. Protection ain't cheap, ya know.
He accepted. Sixty gildar and fifty plus diplomatic capital richer, I proceeded to send my newest unit, the Royal Guard of Irane, in, in a full stack, to hit Magnar's sovereign's stack. The guards died to a man. But so did every unit in Magnar's stack. Their sovereign was left with a measly 10 HP. Then I moved in my veterans from the desert war in, which proceeded to butcher the weakened sovereign, and the smaller stack he frantically merged with as he saw my units slowly trekking their way through the forest to him, having cut off his escape.
Magnar plummeted a good ten points in power. And I ended up fighting a grueling land war across much of the northern map to take over all of his cities. Turns out that part of the reason why he was so effective against Altar was because Magnar had developed something called "Droge" (?) archers. Which were lightly armored archers that swarmed targets with arrows. I lost over half of the veterans from the war with Umber, given their lightly armored status. My new guardsmen however, now acting in much larger groups, and heavily armored, were more then happy to take the hits. They were slow, but each turn they can go into a defensive mode, doubling their defense as they hide behind their shields. Archers can't do crap against that.
Better yet, I leveled Irane up to the point where she was a master and then grandmaster of air magic. This lead to me, in conjunction with me giving her a huge amount of speed to get more turns per fight (Double any other unit.), abusing the hell out of a spell that let her teleport around the battlefield. She did this by teleporting up into a storm cloud then sending a bolt of lightning down to hit everything in a 3x3 radius, and appearing at the impact sight. Given the archers lightly armored status, this meant that Irane basically zapped around the battlefield like a character in DBZ, blowing everything to hell as she set foot on the ground. Magnar's sovereign spent most of our fights chasing me around the battlefield, desperately trying to land a hit on me.
This was aided by me basically having the largest repository of mana in the world when stacked up against the other factions. I have two of almost every shard. Which meant a ton of mana per turn, and a ton of extra power to my core spells. I abused this heavily, putting a spell that regenerated HP every turn on every unit on Irane's own stack. This meant that they regenerated something like 3 HP per turn in combat per unit, and that much plus the normal regeneration rate on the world map.
So after a long battle in which Magnar went from fielding units directly, to trying to slow me down while he regrouped, I took Magnar's territories. I fought him constantly to his final holding. Which is an interesting place. He had a colony set up so that you had to travel through a hostile land called the "World's End". It's an icy northern region filled with lots of monsters, and is apparently the home of some ancient elemental ice god whose name I can't spell. Further exploration revealed that the region is fairly large, and has a unique resource in the center of it.
When I first sent a unit into it to scout around, this cinematic came up.
At the far end of it, in a tiny area that wasn't controlled by the elemental lord, was a tiny colony that had all of Magnar's heroes and his sovereigns. Since I couldn't figure out where he was (His next to last colony was on the other side of it.), he had been using this hidden base to launch guerrilla strikes to retake some of his cities. I put a stop to that after I traced his latest attack back to its destination, and finally wiped him out.
Not long after, Altar messaged me to warn me that they thought Gilden was becoming a power in the world. So I assume either they're equal to me, or near to it. Not long after that, Resoln came up as being wiped out by Gilden.
Altar, as it turns out, is doing fine. They've gone from about 18 faction strength to about 50, and have a horde of units exploring the world, looking for new colonies to settle (As I took all the ones that Magnar took from them.), and quests to do (They get off on that sort of thing, it seems.). Right now they seem to be poking around this swamp to the south of World's End, that's filled with trolls. Coincidentally, I just sent a detachment of troops down to clear the trolls out, so I can get access to the mines that are there. I'm about to ally with them. Between our two faction strengths, we should be able to keep the peace for awhile. Which should be long enough to pacify World's End.
If anyone's interested in hearing more as I do this play-through, i'll keep posting as I progress or until I get bored. Otherwise i'll shut up about my experiences with the game.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I Preordered the original and was... Disappointed. Your posts are sparking my interests!
Well, got an update. Just happened in the last thirty minutes.
So after I took out Magnar, I was feeling pretty high and mighty about myself, if it wasn't evident. Way I saw it, I was going to go for a diplomatic victory. We'd unite the land, and i'd purge those "wild lands" like the one I showed in my previous post. Gilden was a kingdom, and obviously would be welcoming towards me, or so I thought.
Well, turns out Gilden is a load of cocks. After I secured my holdings I decided to send out scouts to explore parts of the continent. To be entirely fair, I am relatively isolated from the rest of the gameworld. I essentially control the entire north-western and northern sections of the map. I pretty much spent my time curb-stomping the local assholes into submission. Which means between my careful pacification of monsters, and the destruction of the two local hostile empires, i'm pretty much in complete control of the region and was isolated from what was going on in the larger whole of the world. Part of my lands include two wild lands that are or bordering my domain. I have no authority in them. One of which is very interesting, and will be shown later on. The other you've seen the preview pic of already. I'll show more of it as well. Mainly, the elemental lord. Which is basically an old god from WoW, if I understand them right.
Anyways, so I met Gilden. Gilden, it turns out, is full of assholes. They have a whopping, as of this post, 650ish faction power and rising. Compare that to my 250ish. This is because apparently they lucked out and had a great starting location free of all of the horrible shit Magnar, Altar, Umber, Kraxis, and I had to deal with, like spiders that happen to be the size of tanks. Or ancient yetis. Or fucking Samara-alikes that stab entire units of soldiers to death with impunity. While everyone else was scrounging in the dirt and squabbling amongst each other, they were living it up in an area free of nightmarish horrors.
Combine this with them conquering two large factions, the Resoln (Who, it seems, if their sovereign and the picture for Fallen Enchantress are to be implying what I think they are, are lead by the enchantress.), and the Pariden. The Resoln being wiped out is understandable. They're an empire. Empires hate kingdoms, and vice versa. Even if you're a saint to them, they tend to be dickish to you if you're of the opposite type without a lot of ass kissing.
The Pariden?...Not so much. In War of Magic Procipinee, their sovereign tended to come across in many of my games as a knight templar magic user who wanted to wipe the empires from the game world. If you weren't down with doing this, they tended to want to wipe you from the world too, sooner or later. They're also a kingdom, which means unless someone got a stick up their ass, or some political intrigue went wrong, there was no excuse for them to be wiped out by the Gilden. They're exactly the sort of faction you'd want on your side if you were a kingdom. Taking them out, in either case, is basically a sign that Gilden is trying to go for a military victory.
So yeah. They're apparently the reigning faction in the game. And they're assholes. They look down on everyone according to their faction sheet. Their faction sheet reads as a steady hostile to everyone except me. Probably because I could actually severely cripple their empire in a straight fight. Also, I paid a fair amount of capital to get treaties going with them. More on that later.
So, I realized where the wind was blowing. Gilden, it seems is slowly but surely wiping every weaker faction out and absorbing their holdings. What's worse, they have a technological edge on most other factions, which means they can improve those taken holdings and make them better then they already are. This is not good, for me, or anyone else. Once they finish wiping out the smaller factions, odds are they're going to come after me. And fighting a map held entirely by the Gilden is not going to be fun. Or easy. Or possibly even doable.
But I have a plan. Y'see. One faction alone can't stand up to Gilden. I could do it, but it'd leave me so weak, that Kraxis would probably come up from the south before the end of things and gut my core cities, which are basically the safest and most profitable places in the game right now. But, what if I pulled a Lord of the Rings, rallied all the factions together, and then declared war on them? Like it or not, Gilden only has one sovereign. And they aren't a master of air magic like me. At this point, I can call down tornados to scatter entire armies, teleport across the battlefield in the blink of an eye multiple times in a second, doing massive damage, and basically ruin anyone's day in a straight fight. I can be in multiple places at once, but only in my own lands. Couple that with other sovereigns and armies, and Gilden would, if my allies helped out, have to be in way too many places at once to fight back.
Altar was all too eager to ally with me. We're best buds now. And really, that's a good thing for both of us. The AI wouldn't see it that way if it was stronger then me prior to the alliance, but two sovereigns and two armies means two fronts, which in turn means that we can do twice as much damage if someone goes after one of us. No one has, and I don't see anyone doing so for the forseeable future.
The other faction nearby, as previously mentioned, is Kraxis.
Problem is, Kraxis thinks i'm Satan incarnate. That stunt with Magnar has them eying me very warily. And I don't see the penalties for starting a war with an empire going away over time. I tried bribing them, but that only gave me a point of favor with them. Hardly enough to create an alliance. So that leaves me with a problem. I've got a hostile empire to my south. A potentially hostile and highly aggressive kingdom to my south-east. And I can't find where the other factions are.
Clearly, I need to send out heroes to find the other nations. Then time the alliances so that they all ally together, before Gilden can wipe them out. And that's just what i've done. Capitar is out there somewhere. I swore, for thematic purposes, i'd wipe them out and raze their cities, before re-populating them. In the backstory, Capitar enslaved the Tarth as gladiators. They're basically Rome. Tarth, the man who freed them is basically fantasy Spartacus. But this takes higher priority then dicking around with the factions.
Yithril sounds like an empire. So they'll be hard to win over, but it's my only shot. Worse comes to worse it's 3v1. Which are decent enough odds even if Gilden has 700 and rising faction power.
Either way, I decided to spend some of my hard earned capital and make a ton of economic treaties. I now trade with everyone I have knowledge of, even if they hate me. As such, i'm gaining something like nearly 60-90 gold per turn from all the caravans. It also boosted everyone else's impression of me.
This what the map currently looks like.
Alternatively, I could pay a shit-ton of money to try and ally with Gilden. With them behind me, depending on how the game works, I could easily score a diplomatic victory by wiping out the remaining empires. It may also be possible that most of their power is coming from their obscene money income. They had when I last checked, thousands of gildar. Given their name it should be obvious why they're getting this. Their military, from what i've seen, is not heavily armored. Or at least, the ones they left to ensure what monsters are left in the civilized realms are lightly armored.
Which reminds me, I recently researched blacksmithing, metal armor, and metal weaponry. I also researched how to design squads, the second to last largest military group. This means my military is about to get very dangerous. Gildar messaged me the same turn I researched armor to brag about how on par they were with me (Apparently they researched the same thing.), but I don't think they realize that I have been gearing myself to go into a seriously large scale war if they attack. To that end, I converted my royal guard over to macewomen. Which are in full chain armor and have a mace and heavy shield. Spearmen are being retired to city defense in unstable areas. And i'm slowly going to phase out my guard in favor of squad level macewomen. Couple that with new advancements in magic (Which is something I need to go into later.), and I have a versatile military I can create and deploy in a short amount of time.
Couple that with some artifacts I found, like the Doomhammer, which lets the hero do more damage with every hit landed, and a new hero I recruited and I can at least put up a fight for awhile if shit goes awry.
In the mean-time, I finally found a way into a new Wild Land. It was surrounded on all sides by a mountain and I had been wondering why I couldn't get to it for awhile now. I finally found the entrance a bit aways from a new settlement I founded, on the borders of the swamp Altar and I were clearing out in the last post. I expected something generic, like a dragon hiding in the mountains or something. Instead things got a bit...Steampunk.
So it turns out the old Imperium (I have the new one. It was one of Magnar's cities.) basically made steampunk golems. The Scrapyard is filled with armies of these things. Very dangerous armies, given that the golems are made of metal and come in, well, armies. Surprisingly enough, this is less dangerous then what I found in the other wild land, the World's End. I may consider trying to plunder this place and bring it under my control, if I can spare the men.
I mentioned World's End in the last update. In the intervening time between when I found Gilden, and the fall of Magnar, I decided to try and pacify it. I managed to pacify the parts that were bordering my towns. I also researched magic more heavily to allow myself to create axes that were perpetually on fire, and designed a new unit. Fallen Enchantress, unlike War of Magic, lets you research common infantry that can use magic. I haven't used them that much, since I haven't had much of a use. Tarth is pretty badass as a normal military nation. But I figured since everything in this area was ice themed, having some fire using troops would be handy. So I founded two new orders. The Felstaves, which are basically black robe clad, fire staff wielding pyromaniacs decked out with everything they need to detonate things from across the battlefield, and the Flamesmen, armored (at the time with leather, my heaviest armor.) knights that wield shields and axes that are perpetually on fire.
A unit of the Felstaves had been prepared and accompanied Irane to the final hold-out of the Magnar. I figured if something horrible jumped my army, they'd make for a good counter to it. Unfortunately, being mages, the Magnar almost immediately slaughtered the unit to a single man. Archers + Robe Clad Pyromaniacs, as it turns out = Lots of dead pyromaniacs. Still, they'd work well against something weak to fire. Just not army versus army battles with lots of ranged troops.
Then I saw the elemental lord. And I knew I was fucked when it came to taking that thing down with my current forces.
Compare the size of my tiny army in the background, to that thing.
Now, look at its stats.
Maybe I shouldn't have been slaughtering all of his minions. The Flamesmen and Felstaves were put on temporary retirement as I high-tailed it the hell out of there. Shortly afterwards, I met Gilden, and that whole mess became my main priority. I may attempt to "salvage" the Scrapyard if I can spare the men. Otherwise, Vetrar is not something I can take on right at the moment.
I'll keep this in mind once it actually releases and maybe give it a shot.
That, and I disassembled the golem armies by throwing tornados everywhere on the strategic map. The Scrapyards were covered in various golem bits after I did that. The aftermath was satisfying. Gilden seems to be pissing its pants at me over some developments now. Also identified a bug in this beta build. Which I am about to rectify with the fantasy equivalent of nukes. Just need to type all this stuff out and upload some screenshots.
I first sent a unit of spearmen, veterans from the Umber desert war, in to explore it. I was trying to discover the properties of the place in an attempt to figure out how to dispel the "border" (The Wild Lands all have a border indicating that they are a faction.) of it. The got a few steps inside before an army of Wildlings, apparently cousins to Darklings, overran them.
So, with that, I decided it was time to send in the big guns.
Y'see, since my last post, I had advanced my level of technology greatly. Literacy was now a thing all of my citizens had, and with that came a technology treaty with every nation. I benefited from this treaty far more then they did, getting on average 25 points to their 2-5. This was because I had a few cities just pumping out scholars. So by this point I had an army of nerds teaching my people how to organize themselves into very large groups of troops, do some fairly high level magic, explore some very high level dungeons, and most importantly, build some very metal weapons and armor.
My old royal guards are officially retired. Most of them are now guarding towns. A few of the royal guards are so high level they accompany Irane, since they can eat armies alive. Enter the macewomen. A common troop that hits hard, can take hits, and generally is an utter bitch to take down. Decked out in full chainmail, and a very nice shield, they're built for attrition fighting and to complement Irane's insane Dragon Ball Z-like teleportation and lightning spamming powers.
Just to be safe, I took them out on a test run. I have a max army size of seven. I had also unlocked the ability to explore a dungeon. So I loaded up on squads of macewomen and my old royal guard and cracked the gates of it. Inside was an army of fire elementals. Amusingly enough, they were on the border to the World's End, and some of them escaped the purge. This means that because Stardock hasn't quite hammered out the code for dungeon mob placement yet, that there's two fire elementals sitting in the center of a lake rather sullenly, stuck there, and one sitting inside the border of World's End.
The rest, I of course, purged since they were a threat to a nearby town. For my troubles I got a fire aligned amulet.
These guys were mostly listed as "deadly" in strength. But I pretty much obliterated them in the first few hits, and they couldn't really hurt my troops. I assume the fact that fire elementals actually do damage to you when you hit them had something to do with that? Also, note the sparkles, we'll get into that later.
So, with one of the two dungeons I could take out dealt with, I traveled to the Scrapyard. And by traveled, I mean I used my mastery over air magic to have my army fly there instantaneously. Gilden had been trying to expand his borders over the place. But I could get in fairly easily, since he wasn't bitching at me to stay out of his lands like Kraxis was.
Once I got in, the NPC's started to, well...Assemble...
I'm pretty sure this is the NPC equivalent of them saying, "We don't want y'all's kind here." in a low key southern drawl. There were obviously lots of them massing up at the entrance in a line to block entrance to the place. Not only that, but my macewomen and guards barely did 15 damage to most of the golem units per hit. And the Guardian Statues, the huge statues you can see, were basically Sauron on PCP.
Unfortunately for them, I was large and in charge. Also, much more practically, I had taken the time before entering the Scrapyards to enchant each of my units to hell and back. I had also noticed that golems are very weak to lightning damage. Guess what sort of spells Irane fields? All my units had to do was hold the line and finish off weakened golems while Irane screamed the words "LIGHTNING BOLT!, LIGHTNING BOLT!" over and over again. And by hold them off, I mean set up a solid line of flesh between them and her.
Cue the world's first Twilight convention:
So many sparkles. By this point I had 2 life shards under my control. This means that when casting regeneration on a unit, every time they get a turn in combat they regenerate 4 HP. Likewise, their HP is boosted by a similar amount in addition to their natural regeneration on the world map. Combine that with me having an army of tanks, and you get the idea.
So, I smashed through the line of golems and wildlings they they set up. In doing so, I lost one unit of royal guard who rolled the dice a bit too low when it came to duking it out with a Guardian Statue. Unfortunately, I noticed that there were tons more golem armies. The wildlings at least couldn't even hurt me. They'd attack and their one rider would run across the battlefield and immediately whack my most damaged troop. Irane would then cast haste on herself and teleport into the middle of the wildling army, sending an earth-shattering lightning bolt to the ground to kill everything nearby, all while giving a hearty staff-backed "Sup?" to the shaman, who would inevitably (barely) survive the blast.
The golems, though? This would take forever. And Gilden was having a weird fluctuation in their points that didn't bode well. So I decided it was time to test out this new spell of mine
Tornado does some minor damage to every unit in an enemy army. But that's not really the reason you want to use it. It throws every member of the army in every direction, obviously splitting it up, and then immobilizes those characters for a few turns. I'm not sure if the normal nation AI is smart enough to counter this by regrouping into a new army. I assume so. But given the close quarters of the Scrapyard, it really didn't matter. I had killed over half of their army before they could even move again. In a group, facing these guys was a grueling battle. Individually, Irane blew them apart by the time they reached my lines. Either way, this place really rewards you bringing high level air magic to it.
So I started killing and looting. The Scrapyard's main trait seems to be, aside from the huge death mana shard sitting in the center of it, along with the flesh-like ground, that it has a bunch of unique Scrapyard only loot objects. Each one gives rare items. The Wildlings also give some neat items. After one battle with them I received what appears to be the best defensive item in the game, "Impenetrable Plate Armor", which is magically enchanted armor with a defensive rating of 20 and an initiative alteration of -1. Of course, as soon as I put it on and went to kill another golem, my game crashed. Infuriated by that, I took a break for a bit before deciding to reload. Instead I got a "Spectral Plate Armor", which is a few points less, but doesn't have the initiative loss. Meaning it's perfect for a caster line Irane. Mollified, I continued my purge of the Scrapyard.
In short, the place is a treasure trove of items. They're always magical, and there's no upper or lower cap to their quality. Sometimes you get a shitty axe from those Samara-alikes, sometimes you get some world destroying artifact that can ream your foes. I got both.
It also has a very large number of "Wildling Camps". Which I assume you'd use if you wanted to zerg the living hell out of your opponents. At first I thought this was going to be like War of Magic, where only empires could recruit map mercenaries. Then I realized it wasn't giving me the "Your faction can't hire this unit type!" message. This also explained why, as I got done clearing the place out, Gilden started poking their nose around, apparently hoping to find some treasure I missed and set up good outpost sites.
I wasn't to be deterred by that. I slew the last of the defenders and prepped a ton of pioneers, waiting to see if the region of influence would die. It did. For some reason, this meant that the death shard in the middle turned into a life shard. I assume this was to represent it being purged. The ground that looked like it was flesh covered stayed, however. Rushing pioneers in, I built outposts on just about everything. Then, on a whim, toggled on the resource tiles to see if there was any usable grain there. To my surprise, there was. But only in a corner that would be hard to expand out of. Still, this was probably the first real city to be founded in a good long while, and it'd still be more money, so I took it. Hope my new settlers like their drinking water to taste like oil, blood, and damned souls.
So not only did I salvage the scrapyard, I colonized it too.
As for Irane and the army I sent in, they came out stone cold bad asses the likes of which the world doesn't have an equal too. This coincided with a new unit. The King's Ward, which are men decked out in plate armor and masterwork swords and shields. They're my deadliest unit so far, but all of them are largely untrained. I had Irane teleport to a few towns producing them to replace the losses I took in the Scrapyards.
Early on Gilden had a new message in his foreign status panel while I was clearing out the Scrapyard. It was a -5 saying that he felt it was "time to unite the world under himself". This coincided with another set of penalties saying that he thought I was "Beneath him", "My military was very weak", and that "I was not impressive" or something similar. He was listed as hostile to me, now. He quickly about faced on all of that around the time his thieves troops in the Scrapyard got a look at how beefy Irane and her army had gotten. His mood then jumped up to "warm", which is a step away from "close", which is what Altar has with me. I could have checked to see if I was capable of allying with him, but I decided that forgiveness was not a virtue when the person you're to be forgiving is a raging asshole. He quickly dropped back down to cool as I colonized the Scrapyard.
And to explain why Gilden shit his pants all of a sudden, look at Irane's stats to see what I mean. Also, note some of the items i've picked up over the course of the game, most of which are about to get distributed to my heroes. Compare that to Vetrar, and then remember that every one of those units now regenerates an insane amount of HP per turn. Nevermind when they're resting in a city, which is easy to do by just teleporting them there, and then teleporting them back to where-ever the enemy is. Also, note Irane's spiffy waist cloak, which may or may not be a result of clipping, and my new King's Ward, which have green (Tarth's national color.) cloaks to go with their gear.
I'm pretty sure I could solo Gilden now. And I think I just might after the shit the AI tried to pull in the Scrapyard.
Which reminds me, apparently the AI is allowed to go into the negatives for their gold. It isn't a huge amount. It seems in the interests of making purchases (Or just because they forgot to code in a cancel to an action it couldn't afford.), it looks like they can make a single purchase that would put them into the negatives. Then they can't spend anymore. This coincides with Gilden's strength constantly going up, and possibly explains it. See, Gilden makes a ton of money per turn. She spends it all instantly on beefing up his nation. Normally he wouldn't be able to do this, but he's got so many cities, that he's pulling in 500ish gold per turn. Which is enough to easily rush low level buildings to completion, and finish out improvements and units that are half-way done.
It's not a big bug, but when you've got a super faction like Gilden that is basically raking in gildar hand over fist, it'd probably contribute to them always dominating other factions. Thus, it's something that needs to be fixed.
Thing is, it'd only take taking a few of their cities, I think, to put a stop to that, and put him into a downwards spiral. The AI probably isn't decisive enough to account for which cities to hit to cripple their income, but a player certainly could. So I think it's time to introduce him to the wonders of Tornado spam and lightning bolts. I might hold off on it if one of my scouts finds Capitar, as it appears they're stuck in some corner of the map. Having them as an ally would mean that Gilden would have to divert troops in multiple opposite directions to deal with all of us if we all went to war. Otherwise if I can't find him soon, i'm going to be putting these artifacts to good use.
See I was playing on the biggest map setting and monsters spawn anywhere that isn't in line of sight, so by the time anyone started exploring past their first city all they found was monsters, who promptly killed them and carried on spawning more and more. It was only with the advent of plate armour and learning how to team up into 12 man units did I manage to start clearing enough of the hard monsters to actually find other civilizations. Most of whom were huddling in their city with a handful of guys trying not to be eaten.
Another game I had was where my main army was my Sovereign, his wife and their 3 mage children who used my control of all the worlds magical shards to just destroy every army they came across with blasts of fire and ice. if anything survived that my Sovereign and family all had magic armour better than anything else in the game. Didn't bother with anything else because with every victory those kids got stronger!
I've noticed that every faction has a unique naming system, which is a nice touch. Or at the very least, names are much more interesting and diverse. Relias of Altar is rolling around the map with something called the "Redwatch", a bunch of lightly armored swordsmen that I haven't seen any other faction fielding. The Redwatch also matches Relias's faction colors. He's also fielding plain old "archers", too. Likewise, Kraxis seems to have uniquely named units. And Gilden is, for some reason, fielding Spear Maidens, something Magnar was fielding in the closing days of the fight with him. I assume it's a generic unit that any faction AI will develop given the right circumstances.
If there's a faction diversity update coming, i'd be interested to see what is in it. A fair number of the factions already seem to be somewhat diverse in terms of what playstyle gives them an edge. I'm assuming they've got something interesting planned on that front, given that the easiest stuff (Faction traits.) is already done. Or at least, appear to be done.
This map is pretty much pacified. At the very least, the territories that i've explored are pretty much monster-less now, with the exception of the Wild Lands. Between Relias doing his "JRPG Hero" thing, Gilden being buggy and broken to all hell in terms of power, and me having a steady grind going to bring law to the lawless on the frontier colonies, there's pretty much only a few nests left in our portion of the map.
From what little I can tell, Gilden has been putting up a good front on that point towards our domain. Or maybe Relias has just been trolling his borders. However, every time i've sent scouts further into his realm, i've noticed that his lands tend to be fairly heavily populated by monsters. My first attempt to find Capitar, many, many turns ago, ended with the one unit of scouts I built getting attacked by an army of trolls not long after I entered his border. I'm actually starting to wonder if he's a (very rich) paper tiger. Since i've never seen any huge overpowered armies to go with the AI's power, or asshole demeanor.
This map is actually probably pretty good. The last five starts i've had, I was quickly crushed by the wild-life. This might have been aided by me assuming the game played like War of Magic, when it doesn't. By comparison, it seems that this map might be slightly less insanely aggressive then the other ones i've started on. One of which started me on the borders to an earth aligned elemental lord's territory.
Edit: Gilden just developed a new mood that I never saw before in War of Magic. "Everyone is out to get me!", which gives a -1 to relations. This coincides with what's listed as his listed leader personality on the foreign status page, which is "greedy", and "paranoid". That's hilarious.
Kraxis is getting the -5 "Time to unite the world!" mood. Maybe I should patrol Iranes' army across his border a few times to give him an idea of what he's up against. Not sure if that'd effect things, but if Gilden backing off of world domination upon seeing her army wasn't a fluke, it might.
Random note, I did notice that I still have the Limited Edition of Elemental sitting behind me somewhere completely boxed and pristine. I didn't need to open it since I installed the game through Impulse. Oh well!
Downloading now.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Yeah, WTF? I thought we lived in the information age or something? This is ridiculous. Plus I do no remember having to do this when I bought GalCiv or SINS. Hm.
That was when they still owned and worked through Impulse. They spun Impulse off and sold it to Gamestop, so maybe some of their infrastructure went with it.
Ah I see. Still, the fact that the purchase of digital goods is not automated is really, really weird in this day and age.
Sadly since it is the weekend (a holiday weekend no less) and it says it takes a business day to process my order, I worry I will not have it until Monday at the earliest. For a digital product, that is just dumb.
Yeah, I was going to spend some of my 3 day weekend playing around with this, but since I'm in GMT+9 by the time they get around to processing my order even my Monday off will be over.
Look on the bright side. FE Beta 3 will be out on 12th april. So you can test the new beta.