Paradox takes a throw at the MoM/FFH2/Elemental thing

[Wasted]

Spent nearly all day yesterday playing this, I like it, though as already mentioned it needs a bit more polish in the interface and in-game info.  Dracolichs are awesome. 

My game is going on quite long, at about turn 250 at the moment.  I've spent the 5000  mana to cast the unity spell twice so far only to have it dispelled, I've got enough to try again, anyone know of a way to protect yourself a bit better from counter-spell or whatever?  Its stupid an 85 mana spell can bring down a 5k one.

[Goumindong]

Not sure. Something to try would be to make sure that the enemies are on friendly terms with you and/or are casting spells of their own so that they can't stop and interrupt you.

[Wasted]

Yep, keeping them at peace and (through clenched teeth) paying out rather than going to war to all the inevitable demands while casting, I got through the 17 turns and won with the Unity spell.

No stats or power graph or anything at the end, was very disappointing.

[Hayduke]

It's very annoying that you can spam all the gold-based perks as much as you want and never worry about upkeep.  But mana-based perks have upkeep, upfront cost, and a cast time.  At a certain point you just won't have time to cast any of them because you'll have higher priority things to cast (nukes, city buffs, teleports, summons, etc..).  Not sure how to address this without making the undead economy very overpowered but right now it makes trying to play the game as a wizard very frustrating.

[Lantyssa]

I played this most of the weekend.  Awesome little game that comes close to my MoM nostalgia.

[amiable]

It's very annoying that you can spam all the gold-based perks as much as you want and never worry about upkeep.  But mana-based perks have upkeep, upfront cost, and a cast time.  At a certain point you just won't have time to cast any of them because you'll have higher priority things to cast (nukes, city buffs, teleports, summons, etc..).  Not sure how to address this without making the undead economy very overpowered but right now it makes trying to play the game as a wizard very frustrating.

In general the mana-based perks give you access to abilities that are much better than gold based perks (particularily flight, vampirism and really nice damage buffs).  Also it is much more efficient to create half a dozen "super units" where you stack a whole bunch of enchantments/buffs and use them as a vanguard.  Good candiadtes for super units:  Old Trolls, Ancient liches (which have become my favorite unit at impossible difficulty because they can clear out 7 weak units at a time), dragons of any sort, ancient vampires, Upgraded human infantry).  I ALWAYS prioritize buffing these units over anything else (at least at max difficulty).  In general I think the undead is the easiest to play with, as long as you can takeover one or two beast towns so you can make a few trolls.  If you build a war college in another city you can still upgrade them to old trolls.  Also your first temple should be the one that gives you access to the ancient liches.  They are incredibly good.

[Sky]

One thing I learned is that you have to build a military academy for each race. I had one for the undead but couldn't build the upgraded shamans in my monster town.

I'm sure my second play-through will go much better, not that this one is all that bad. Just tough not knowing which units are best to rush for, I still only have a couple elite units. Since I was able to upgrade a decent little rogue to an assassin, I made her a friend (2nd assassin unit, yay invis) and just got an elite vampire and started upgrading him. My economy is still pretty shot.

I rolled over that wench that kept asking for tribute and found another AI bug. I put a gold bane on her and she slapped me with two mana banes that drain 20 mana/turn. So every turn I demand 100 mana from her and sell it to the Ibis-headed dude who is attacking her from the far side. Just finishing off her capital now, it was good to level my core troops but my army is still mostly veterans and rangers, albeit heavily upgraded ones. Wish there were a way to get up the hp on rangers a bit.

Speaking of ancient liches, I was gifted a couple skeleton veterans (one of which promptly got swarmed). The other one was able to take out an ancient lich thanks to his death immunity...and then a couple vampires rolled up and he took them out, too. Decided to build a little undead brigade to guard my eastern border and I'm sending over my elite vamp to anchor that line.

[Merusk]

I got an elf hamlet Saturday morning and made some archers out of curiosity. Yeah, do that. 

They're 125 gold each but with the Drilled & Enchanted weapons perks they were ~21 atk right out of the gate.  By comparison my Goblin Sharpshooters (elite units) were level 5 with the same promos and only about 19atk.

Also, Trolls w/ Spirit of <not halloween> are lulzwrothy.  You have to do 11 damage just to knock them down a hp.  Put a troop of them with an Ordained Shaman w/ his regen aura.  Roflstomp ensues.

[amiable]

I got an elf hamlet Saturday morning and made some archers out of curiosity. Yeah, do that. 

They're 125 gold each but with the Drilled & Enchanted weapons perks they were ~21 atk right out of the gate.  By comparison my Goblin Sharpshooters (elite units) were level 5 with the same promos and only about 19atk.

Also, Trolls w/ Spirit of <not halloween> are lulzwrothy.  You have to do 11 damage just to knock them down a hp.  Put a troop of them with an Ordained Shaman w/ his regen aura.  Roflstomp ensues.

Old trolls with halloween + elemental regen heal 26 points per turn.  Witha few defense upgrades they are literally impossible to kill.

[Merusk]

Yeah I figured old trolls would be even more insane but I can't build 'em yet.   I'm pushing for it, though.

[Sky]

I got an elf hamlet Saturday morning and made some archers out of curiosity. Yeah, do that. 

Yep, the only elf resource was in the middle of the gnarly monster area by my original spawn. Once I had set up my border cities and recalled the western forces in prep of attacking the annoying mage chick, I quickly set a city up there and I've got two elven archers right now (had to save up for the elite vamp). Also getting an ordained shaman in about ten turns, or maybe a dracolich. Mostly just want to pump out all kinds of stuff this game and see how they play out and interact with each other.

One of the two elf archers I sent to the new western (undead) force as support..really nice to have the movement buff on them.

Also, for the love of god I wished I had known how little terrain affected buildings earlier in this game and how buildings act as roads. Because, yeah, place your buildings as roads through your empire.

[Lightstalker]

I was stomping another plane with archers and a siege ship... helps to cast invisibility on them.  Cleaned out all the Greater Elementals and Dragons without suffering return fire.  Then I was stomping the main plane with dragons.

Then 1, 2, and 3 rivals started casting Unity.  That was cool, except I couldn't find the 3rd before he finished casting and I lost.  Regenerating Vampiric dragons are pretty bad-ass.  Elemental Reincarnation is also really handy when they do get enough wizards/clerics together to bring one down.  Was playing a huge-island map with max opponents and 6 alternate planes.  Totally sucked me into One More Turn mode and I played it out straight through.

Invisibility on archers really lets you open up enough space to establish a proper beachhead, after you've broken the initial portal defender down.

[Sky]

I do wish they'd put up a victory condition checklist in the options, I'd remove Unity every time. Cheese.

[Maledict]

Yeah, the more I play this the more some very basic stuff seems to be missing. It could be a really good game but needs a heck of a lot of stuff adding in, and right now the AI seems as fearsome as the AI in MoM. At least it got that bit right then!

[Lantyssa]

I've found it worthwhile to use other races to build cities specifically for perks.  While there is some overlap, they frequently get different ones.  All told, I probably had a dozen or more different ones to upgrade my units with.  Also the special units each race gets from temples are different.

Krypta gives the Liches for Undead, but Sisters of Krypta for humans which are super-vampires.  (Working on getting a monster city up to see some choices there.)

[Sky]

I had a quest to build a temple for bugburg or whatever the hell his name is, and he was pretty closely situation to the assassin-granting god I had tons of favor with, so I was going to go for it...then learned it had to be in a monster city, which I only had two located nowhere near holy ground. Ah, well.

[CmdrSlack]

Tried to play the demo last night, but for some reason, I just get stuck on a black screen with no indicator that stuff is loading, etc. Pulling up the task manager converts the black screen to the game logo splash screen. Then nothing. Sucks too, because it sounds like something I could waste many hours playing.

[Sky]

Seems to be happening to a minority of people, with the only feedback the usual stuff, update drivers etc. XP isn't officially supported, you might have to dig if you're running the dino, some have it working.

Did you try rebooting? Half the people reporting the issue said it worked after a reboot.

[CmdrSlack]

I'll have to try a reboot. I'm running Win 7, so lack of XP support isn't the issue.

[Sky]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/206560/

DLC out. One new mage, two mage perks and a new resource (lizard village for lizardmen). Only $3, but still underwhelming given the work the game needs. I guess it's a start, and will be nice for a deep discount sale buy.

[Lantyssa]

Damnit.  Lizard race and Queen.  Bastards just ensured a buy from me.

[Kageru]

I do wish they'd put up a victory condition checklist in the options, I'd remove Unity every time. Cheese.

Patched this morning. Lots of fixes, diplomacy changes, hero characters with equipment and selectable victory conditions.

[Lightstalker]

Sweet, and the steam summer sale had the Lizard DLC too.

[Wasted]

I was coming across a bug which would close the game for me when there where over 400 units total on a map.  It was supposedly going to be fixed with this patch but I don't see it in the list 

[Sky]

Player can now destroy his buildings from city interface

So along with my quote above about victory conditions, there's two things that needed fixing.

[Threash]

Heros with equipment? sweet, this is at least moving in a more Master of Magic direction as i hoped.

[Kageru]

The changes are very good. Being able to destroy cities so I can place them myself is a massive change for the better.

There's some negative modifier for having mixed race armies as I understand it? The manual for this game is abominably bad.

[Goumindong]

You could always destroy cities. Now you can destroy buildings.

There is no penalty for mixed race buildings, but your off racial cities have a growth penalty and so cannot get as large or grow as quickly as on racial buildings.

[Lantyssa]

Some of the units and unique buildings are totally worth having though.  I always keep at least one of each racial city in my empire.  Especially the Beastmen on a Pumpkin Patch.

[Threash]

Meh, the lizard people are not an actual new race.

[Goumindong]

The new heroes just seem to be extra units. They aren't all that special except that they can sub for building up late game creatures and they're gold cheap compared to building units. They can equip artifacts which are mainly just armor/damage bonuses with the exception of a few that will add skills.

They're best for humans since humans have the weakest late game creatures(and best unit upkeep costs and gold generation) and worst for Undead since undead is going to desperately be worrying about its unit upkeep and rushing to draco-liches or attempting to spam skeletons.

Ed: might be worse for beasts since they get the best general units

Ed: Definitely worst for Undead. Lategame units are so expensive that lords don't interfere. But their mid game upkeep hampers undead the most. Definitely best for humans since humans late game creatures are kinda bad and really need to use religious units. This gives them a bit more power over just using veterans or cuthroats [or trolls if you get a beast town] until you hit your religious units.

[Lantyssa]

A pumped up Vampire or Daughters of Krypta are plenty for Undead.  Dracoliches didn't impress me that much.

[Goumindong]

Vampires are great if you're fighting humans/beasts(sisters are terrible), but draco-lichs are necessary for clearing elementals well and killing other undead.

The only good undead religious unit are Paladin's of Death [immune to death and life damage!]

[Lantyssa]

Nah.  Cast the various elemental weapons on them so they do all the damage types.  One of my units, not even Elder Vampires, could one-shot elementals.

[Amaron]

This game could probably rape my wallet with DLC pretty hard.   Curious to see if they will go that route.