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

[Merusk]

This game was fairly entertaining from the Demo, but it had some pretty odd UI quirks. Initial thoughts:

* The unit you had selected always being selected until you move to another unit or city.  Many, many times I accidentally made a warrior start marching in the wrong direction because he wouldn't deselect.

* The game doesn't give good feedback on ways to increase your population growth.  This could just be a demo problem, though.  You can't have more buildings than population so strategy is required in plotting what each cities focus will be.

* No feedback on how the city's radius will increase and what it's final radius will be.  Key when puking out settlers/ pioneers to plan your empire and best utilize strategic resources.

* No hero units does indeed make me a sad panda.

* I agree with TB's critique of the magic tree.  You have 2 heal spells to research initially but then one turns into a dispel tree.  Odd.   I really wish this was linked to spell books or some mechanic like MOM instead of being able to research all trees at all times.

* Can't speak for the wizard customization or perk system since the tutorial gives you a preset wizard and scenario.

* Units don't seem to have a "fortify" or "sleep" option.  Always having to move or interact with a unit makes it a little irritating.

* The map scrolling, like Civ 5, is fucked with dual monitors.  You have to dance right on the edge of where your 2nd monitor is.  There doesn't seem to be a click-pan system either.

* The unit perk system is pretty nice.  You can build foundries, etc then spend cash to outfit your units in the field in addition to the rank-ups from leveling.  Masterwork armor saved a few of my warriors from early graves due to its bonus.

In the 30-40 mins I played with it, it felt like FFH2 for Civ5 with a bad UI.  I think it'll be worth the $20 down the line when I'm sick of D3 but it's no MOM.

[ffc]

* Units don't seem to have a "fortify" or "sleep" option.  Always having to move or interact with a unit makes it a little irritating.

If your unit has enough action points (i.e., the start of a turn) the lower left side of the screen will have a "rest" button for the unit when it is selected.  This will let the unit heal and will be skipped in future turns.  I had a ground unit resting and outhealing the damage from a flying monster until my archers came in.  I think there's a "defend" setting too. 

[Merusk]

Yeah, the options all start in the closed position, for some inexplicable reason.  Warriors seem to develop a "sentry" option but my archers only seem to have it in the cities. Weird.

Defend only works for a single turn, but at least there IS a sentry option, which removes some of the tedium of dealing with every army unit every turn.

ed: Also, the problem of only 3 starting races can be somewhat alleviated.  If you take over a city of another race (in the demo, take the one to the northwest)  you can produce settlers of that race, like in MOM.   So while you can't start as undead you can at least produce swarms of settlers to turn that way.

[Maledict]

Yet again someone shoots for MoM crown and falls short.

Demo seemed far too simple for my liking - no specific spell schools (so same research paths for all), only 3 races, no control of troops in combat so none of the combat spells, and the variety of random monsters didn't seem that impressive. Also the city building system removes a lot of the strategic choice from the game re. guns and butter.

 It really felt like a cut down version of civ 5 where combat was the primary focus with a fantasy overlay.

[Speedy Cerviche]

I was always pretty skeptical of this game...really a lot of marketing overreach going on.

To me it  just looked like another sequal to "Elven Legacy", but with some more beef to the strategic side with city management & magic tree.

Elven Legacy was a fun little mission based turn based generic fantasy strategy game, but trying to sell a sequal as some grand x4 game really seemed like a huge stretch. Can't expect MoM here, just more of the earlier game, juiced up a bit. Not necessarily a bad thing if you have a hankering for that sort of game.

[Xilren's Twin]

I have played through the demo to its end state a couple of times and the more time I have spent with it, the more I like it.  It’s not exactly MoM, but it’s actually closer than I thought.  The biggest lack of course is the hero units with the ability to equip items, unit stacking and the separate tactical map for combat, but in actuality, it plays out very similar. Initially, I kept running into problems due to the amount of npc monsters, but it really was more about the pace I was trying to play then a problem with the game.  It seems that a slower more careful and deliberate exploration is far better than sending out a “scout” to reveal the map (and grab unguarded treasure in MoM).  If your scout reveals a portal/npc home with elementals, demons, vampires, dragons, etc and you aren’t ready for that stuff, the monsters will rampage all over you and usually multiple groups of them at the same time.

The best route definitely seems to be to use multiple units to support each other, protect your guys so they can level up, plus use perks to make them into really superior units.  Even in the small area of the demo, I had an alpha strike team of 1 warrior unit, supported by 3 archers and eventually Earth Elementals which I used to clear portal mobs and surrounding area, then go through them.  The warrior chose level ups like increased defense, elemental resistance, increased movement, plus adding the perks from smithies like superior armor, and silver weapons, made them very good at holding the line while my pumped up archer units rained death from safety.  Liberal use of healing spells and good positioning helps quite a bit.

The special terrain items can be quite beneficial, like pig farms giving 6 food instead of 3 for a regular farm, and most of them have multiple options for use.  For example, the elven treefort one allows you to build elven housing for elf archer/sharpshooter units, an elven bow range for perks for archers, or even a casino!? for increased gold production, but you can only choose one use.  Silver could be mined for money or turned into a smithy for weapon perks.  Pumpkins had some options for unlocking Ghost stuff for undead units (have to own a city that is applicable for) or increased food and mana.  Gemstones can be used for wealth or to make protective amulet perks.  Holy ground, nature nodes, fire rifts - there seem to be a lot of special terrain types.

Clearing monster lairs often brings gold, magic, or even spells (I got the Summon Earth Elemental spell I think from clearing some demons).  The “quests” could be building certain structures, founding cities, or even killing specific mobs – the last quest I got was from a god to kill some liches that appeared right next to one of my towns for rewards plus reputation gain with that god.  Yeah, the spell research appears random and unorganized, but many of the spells themselves appear very useful.
The special terrain and npc cities also mitigates the “only 3 races” part.  Yes mine was a human empire, but I had goblin and elf troops too, and saw places for dwarves, minotaur, bats, undead and more, including dragons.  Course the dragon eggs were through a portal and them places are tough.  Many more resources/specials are found on the other side, and course tough mobs like Greater Fire Elementals that have ranged attacks and have 90% resistance to normal melee and missile, not to mention the dragons themselves.  If you could clear that area and found some cities, that would be hugely beneficial, but you have to work up to it.  I didn’t get a chance to start building my priest, wizards, catapults and higher level units before the demo’s end but I could see the plan.  By the end of my last run, I had 6 cities, some good units and knew what I wanted to do/where I wanted to go next and it definitely had the “one more turn” appeal for me.  It’s not perfect, but I will be getting the full game for certain especially since it will only be $20.

[WayAbvPar]

Thanks for that writeup...sounds like a $20 purchase for me.

[Merusk]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with Xil but he put it out there better than I would have.   I have issues with the UI but it's a fun game and I've already pre-purchased.  I want that free DLC and it's only $20.  I can skip lunch one or two days.

[Sky]

Fuck, lost my biif when the browser crashed. (If you like fantasy TBS and can overlook a bit of jank; Buy It)

Is there a manual?

edit: Wow. The dev site is laughable, and the Paradox community site doesn't have the forum up yet...the steam link to forums goes to an old site that leads to the new site where I found:

http://www.paradoxplaza.com/sites/default/files/PDX9405EU_Warlock_Onlinemanual.pdf

...and it's completely useless.

[Merusk]

All I've found is a beginner's guide.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?606556-Warlock-Master-of-the-Arcane-Beginners-guide-Released!

[Sky]

Yeah, I saw that, too. Still nothing you can't get in the first hour of playing. Though it seems in the video that's mostly just the tutorial hints from the game   that at one point he selects a city that's 3 hexes wide, one of my previous questions. How? Why? When? Who knows?

The movement thing bugs me, too. I wish there were a number displayed in each hex of a potential move. Also, no army or city list overview screens, in Civ I pretty much work out of the city list for production once I hit a certain amount of cities.

I really do like the game for the most part, limited as it is. Hopefully it gets enough love for a couple patches, but I'm not encouraged by the dev site, seems more like a quick grab.

edit: how to destroy a building in my city? Clicking on it looks like it should work but then it's fine the next turn.

[Paelos]

I played it in the demo. I didn't really seem sticky to me for a reason I can't put my finger on. Civ usually made me want to keep going, but this was maybe too simple I guess?

[Xilren's Twin]

Started my first real game yesterday and already hit the "one more turn" feeling b/c im in 2 wars.  Started with a custom mage with bonus to unit xp and research, large land mass in continents, 4 rivals and 4 dimensions.  My captial city was stuck on a 2 hex wide snowy penninsula almost at the north edge of the map, so i only have about half the land i could use; i alsmost immediately started over but decided to give it a shot.  I was able to go west to the mainland and take over an human npc city near a minotaur hex, and found a city near a halberd camp.  About then i ran into my first rival, and we left each other alone for a few turns until i took over a skeleton npc town near his border, at which point he declared war.  So i jumped on a town right next door he had just founded, and that has been our area of conflict since.  This mage is a ghost guy so clearly he gets bonus summons of ghost wolves, which are strong melee units.  Thank goodness they are weak to archery, but they have a high move rate so its been back and forth.  I thnk i finally have him on the ropes with my halberd units, archers, skeleton warriors, and some mino's and a catapault incoming.  Money is very tight, so i can't afford most of my advanced units right now.  Once again healing spells and retreating to my territory has helped level my guys up.  My inital warrior unit is like level 5 and now has +2 regen per turn as a level perk which is tremendous.  Then in the last 2 turns, and ogre shows up and is thankfully attacking on of the ghost mages towns, and a new orc wizard who i had a non aggression pact with just decalared war.  Yeah, im hooked.

[Sky]

I started a second game after learning the basics, but my first game was a good setup. Unfortunately I didn't focus build in my cities (thus my question about how to tear old buildings down), so I ended up running out of money without advanced buildings and just relying on minotaurs when suddenly that pleasant looking girl decided to bilk me for 3/4 of my treasury every few turns. Seeing that she had clerics and wizards and was lobbing spells at everything in sight, I decided to pay up, which further screwed my progress.

Then in the new game, maybe turn 18 or so, I send a warrior over to mop up a spider den with a 12 spider on it (I had fine and master armor plus bladewall on the warrior already)...1st round of combat I almost take them out. Second round...WTF rating 24 spider spawns. It will probably rampage my lands, I have some imps exploring (and about to get pasted) and the newbie rogue/hunter duo that just took an undead castle and are hoping the ogres nearby aren't feeling too frisky....I went to bed.

[Sky]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?606849-Delete-Demolish-Buildings

Apparently the button has been removed from the city screen...so there isn't a way to demolish buildings, currently.  Along with a report that the Unity spell (for a research win condition) was also removed from the game.

[Maledict]

Is it me, or does terrain outside the specials make no difference to cities at all? And there's no drawback to having as many cities as possible as there's no overall happiness / corruption factor? And settlers are very cheap and don't restrict growth in their city?

So every map you should just ICS everywhere constantly?

I feel like I'm missing something because the entire city building aspect of the game seems broken to my initial view.

[Sky]

It's not you :(

As I've said, the game is definitely scratching the itch right now, and I'm looking forward to playing...but I don't see it sitting in the pantheon of MoM/FFH2/AoW/HoMaM/Disciples kind of titles. And I would be surprised if this dev house gives it the post-release love it will need to be around for long.

[Modern Angel]

I just don't feel like there's enough rad stuff in there to do its job. One of the unifying themes of MoM and AoW, the two best of all, was just how much choice you had. Overwhelming, wonderful choice. Three races, few buildings, and such... eh. It's not bad, by any means, but it ain't great, either

[Merusk]

I figure it's fun enough for the $20 I spent on it. My hopes are that if it sells well they'll develop a little more depth but if not, no biggie.  There's never going to be an MOM2, only pale pretenders and I've begun to come to peace with that. 

[Xilren's Twin]

Is it me, or does terrain outside the specials make no difference to cities at all? And there's no drawback to having as many cities as possible as there's no overall happiness / corruption factor? And settlers are very cheap and don't restrict growth in their city? So every map you should just ICS everywhere constantly?
I feel like I'm missing something because the entire city building aspect of the game seems broken to my initial view.

There's no question this game is "simplier" than Mom or Civ; the city building is more about choosing the purpose for a city and your build order to reach that goal and balancing your gold/food/mana growth to support your armies.  In terms of settler spam to victory, i dont think that will really be neccessary due to the prevalence of NPC towns (npc wizards definately spam settlers).  Im on about turn 120 and have elminated 2 mages and have 23 cities.  I only founded 2 of them, 1 at the very beginning of the game and one in a wildreness area near a portal and holy ground once i cleared the greater fire elemental guarding it.  I have ridiculous number of different racial units to choose from (see spolier below if you care) now but money is still the limiting factor.  I built a temple to a god to complete a quest so now i can recruit his champion units, but they cost like 700 each.  The other dimensions are still requiring too much effort for me to seriously conquer yet; maybe after i elemintate one more mage can i direct my hordes through one of the 3 portals im sitting on.  And yes, stayed up way too late last night playing so "missions accomplished" for me. :) 

[Merusk]

Know what.. I think the settler spamming is intentional.  The growth of cities is pretty damn anemic at only 90-120 per turn and there's no way to modify it that I've found.  Combine that you can only have one building per population and the very specific chain of buildings required to get some elite units and the only way to actually build a decent army is to have a city per unit type.  "This is my wizard city.. this is my Ranger city.. This is my Veteran Goblin Spearman/ Vet Archer city.."

[Modern Angel]

I figure it's fun enough for the $20 I spent on it. My hopes are that if it sells well they'll develop a little more depth but if not, no biggie.  There's never going to be an MOM2, only pale pretenders and I've begun to come to peace with that. 

Yeah, though I do think AoW was a worthy successor. And probably Dominions 3. So it's cool. I have so much gaming in that style, if I think about it, that I don't actually know if I need a new one.

[Sky]

Day two of not being able to post on the official forum. Funny how I registered the day I bought the game, there's a feature request thread, and I can't post to it...

Had a lot of fun with this last night. Went back to my second game and fought through that spider encounter. Lost my level 3 rogue, but cleaned up the area. AI is a bit flaky about pursuit, I was able to weather the initial 26 spider but elude the second (and third!) that appeared. I was trying to rush minotaurs, since they worked quite well in my first game; but growing the city I conquered took longer than I expected (undead city, I'm human) and I developed vanguards or whatever the upgrade from warriors are called two turns after building my first mino (who weathered the ogre spawn near the undead city but died because he wandered too far west).

Which gets me into some more negative stuff, exploration is nigh impossible. Using summons was too expensive, sucked my mana dry early on trying to use imps. I built some bats with the undead town, which worked better as they avoided melee, but they'd still get stomped by half the mobs because they had ranged attacks. Ditto sea travel, seems almost useless to build a ship except for very limited ranged support (along shores of a tame sea). I miss transport ships, too.

Speaking of ranged, when a ranged unit is attacking another ranged unit, there should be retaliation. It's making ranged units way overpowered. Still want way more information exposed, planning ahead with cities = frustrating. I also had the idea of building a city dedicated to each unit type, but that gets expensive because only my melee city gets all the armor perks...which makes sense, but it's still nice to have armor on the archers. But because I built the building for advanced units in my capital, I have to buy the upgrades for rogues and archers. Not that I've built any rogues. I've yet to build a single mage in the game, thanks lack of tech tree information! It would be nice to have a civopedia, too. Beyond seeing what buildings I can build, it would be nice to preview the units to see if they are even worth building given the restrictive nature of city growth (which is a decent strategy layer, imo...if you can do it in an informed manner). Someone said you can raze your own buildings, but I forgot to try it last night, might be a workaround to the removal of the destroy building button from the city screen.

I think I'm on turn 200, just have my first decent army out exploring slowly and I'll have to recall them to go tromp the wizards I've uncovered due to the endless demands for gold - it's almost better to not explore and discover other wizards until you can just destroy them on sight. Diplomacy seems to be a total joke. I'll probably just start building up my next few conquests as support towns for resources. Another note about cities - it's worthless to build them on the coast. Sea tiles are wasted expansion space, especially in small early cities.

[amiable]

Another note about cities - it's worthless to build them on the coast. Sea tiles are wasted expansion space, especially in small early cities.

Tiles next to the see are actually quite valuable as you can only build shipyards and fishing villages (a +5 food square unique to monsters) in those spaces.  I would kill for a manual detailing building trees and units.

So far I have discovered undead ->  bat fort -> bank ->  Vampire mansion - Vampires (which are awesome).
Goblins----->  Whateverto troll bridge ->  trolls (which are also awesome).

[Merusk]

If all you're looking for is the ability to browse all buildings, click on the "show all buildings" button on the city screen.  It's right below the list of buildings you can currently construct.  By browsing that you can find units and work backwards to see what basics you need to get those units.  Not ideal but better than trying to deciper it game to game. 

There's a push to put up info on GameFAQs as well.

[Sky]

Tiles next to the see are actually quite valuable as you can only build shipyards and fishing villages (a +5 food square unique to monsters) in those spaces.  I would kill for a manual detailing building trees and units.

Well, yeah, but then you want to build at least two hexes from the shore. You still get (more, actually) shore tiles but you limit the fact that half your city's tiles are unusable ocean tiles. I have on city I had build on the ocean before I thought of that and because there was an iron resource next to it I had to defer building until the city expanded one more hex (I already had a smithy in the capital). Also, why build more than one harbor to give your units the Cog ability?

:eyeroll: at GameFAQs for a strategy game. I've found a couple decent walkthroughs for rpgs; but this game needs at least a wiki. And the fanboyism on the forum is typical - wtf the manual is awesome!  

Merusk - I've seen that, but you still can't view the actual units to see if they're any good. Like in my current game when I pushed so hard to get minotaurs just as I built the upgrade to the warrior who is tanky as hell and he quickly leveled enough to blow away a mino easily.

[Xilren's Twin]

Couple of notes from turn 163.  Got my two rivals on the ropes; one down to 2 cities and the other has a small continent completely covered with 8 but i just established a beachead.  Initially tried a mass normandy style boat invasion but transport boats are so fragile the mass of archers and forts made mincemeat of them.  My beachead was purely the effort of my new MVP, a single ghost unit; since the are immune to melee and missle, he was able to take out a size 8 city by himself while taking fire from the city, 2 forts, archers, and a galleon.  Properly supported with spells, he's almost unkillable if the enemy isnt fielding mage units.  Chokepoints work.

Other notes: casting 2+ turn spells like Armageddon are tough when your rival mages keep counterspelling you.  Use the diplomacy interface to check what spells are casting and counter spell them right back (save from getting torched by the giant rains of fire).
I've almost exhausted the spell research: 3 of the 5 choices are now blank, so the removal of the unity spell seems accurate.
By not clearing the other dimensions and oceans or lairs, monster spam has grown tremendously.  I'm now dealing with red dragons, two headed dragons, demons and elements coming through portals very regulary and the amount of sea serpents attacking coastal units and towns is ridiculous (i think last turn i spotted 6 and have probably killed at least 20 so far). I've had to station forts and armies near all portals.
Trolls and catapults are the best siege units, elven archers and giant spells help a lot. Catapults and magic forts are the only units i have found that can shoot 3 hexes so far, which is important.
Also take out liches with skeletons as they also will take no damage.

[Sky]

Yeah, the cogs. That's why I was lamenting the lack of transport vessels. Cogs are a nice convenience feature, I guess...but they're very cheaty (my new veteran got jumped by a power 35 quest mob on a coast, embarked and got away clean) and without a way to beef them up...blah. Then again, I tended to like Archipelago maps in Civ IV/FFH2 and the cog mechanic kinda trivializes the challenges of those maps (and wastes a lot of time embarking/debarking - at least with a transport you can embark and then the transport still has movement points).

The sea lair thing is a good point about growing some ships or at least a good flying unit. Can the upgraded ships fight worth anything? I should just split off this current game into two save paths, and just spend one documenting units. Especially with all the immunities. There's literally no way outside of exhaustive experimentation to learn what units are worth building.

Anyway. My current game is finally starting to move forward a bit. I've got two sets of decently upgraded units pushing east and west to give me some breathing room, and had to make a home base army for all the quest mobs it's pushing into the homeland. Still kind of bizarre the way ratings work, without rt-clicking and looking at the defenses and full set of perks, it's impossible to tell how a battle is going to go until you get close enough to engage, needs Civ's alt-mouseover combat prediction tool imo. I've got maybe ten or twelve cities and hardly any cash flow, hardly any advanced buildings - the building trees are just kind of a mess, especially with the lack of unit info.

I think I'm currently supporting (right around turn 200):

Army 1: My small original army, a lvl 7 veteran and a level 9 ranger, with a level 4 veteran moving behind as clean-up.
Army 2: The western army, a vet, ranger and rogue - sometimes a bat to scout quickly, but they die so fast.
Homeland defense: A vet and two rangers.

Funny moment of last night: Monsters fighting undead over an undead city, with pressure from another mage to the north (she seems to be getting pushed back when I showed up). Anyway, I cross some mountains to grab the undead city, start to jump on the 35 power fire elemental that's wasting everything in the area...but he's obsessed with the city (yay AI). I note he destroyed the city defenses just as I had everyone in position, so I slip my veterans past him and grab the city. Thanks, fire elemental!

[Sky]

Day 3, I can post on the forums. Added this off the top of my head (with this page as reference) to the feature request thread there:

• Splitting selection/action to left/right buttons from current left/left behavior.
• Better feedback on population growth and factors leading to it
• Better feedback on city radius increases and what the final size will be
• Actual magic research tree
• Keybinds (my personal preference would be bind to Civ defaults, D=defend S=sentry G=go, etc)
• Demolish building key!
• Ability to build other structures on resources. Once I have a Smithy, I'd like to build something else on Iron hexes in other non-production cities
• *An encyclopedia of buildings and especially units*
• Army and city overview windows - lists armies or cities and you can interact (selecting/upgrading units; setting build orders/unit production etc)
• AI pass - fire elemental should consider my approaching army over the defenseless NPC city it's attacking
• Diplomacy pass - constant demands of tribute with only responses pay/war gets old fast
• Water tile buildings - right now, building on a coast is a penalty; one city two tiles in for a harbor to get cogs is all you'd want
• Add water transport vehicles and remove the cog behavior - Cogs trivialize water maps (though see previous point), and they're exploitive (I had a lvl 1 veteran escape a powerful quest mob by embarking into the ocean). Transports also facilitate better troop movement, can embark and then use transport's move allowance rather than embark, wait, move, wait, debark, wait.
• Give tiles differing values for production. A farm in the desert? A market in the swamp? Give mages spells to terraform as needed to deal with subpar city locations.
• Better movement feedback - having the number of movement points expended appear in each hex of the path would be great. Alternately, have multi-turn moves show number of turns along the route.
• Civ-style combat odds window on alt+mouseover rather than current behavior of having to be in combat range to consider odds
• Ranged counterattack. If a ranged unit attacks another ranged unit, the defender should get an attack once the original attack's results have been calculated.

Also, some folks stepping up: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/warlockmota/images/8/85/Techtree_color.jpg
http://warlockmota.wikia.com/wiki/Units

Some other things, not confirmed, I've been reading on their forum:

• City growth is a constant (based on the population#, so modified only by race afaik) - 5 turns for 2-hex, 10 turns for 3-hex. I could swear my capital went to 3-hex at turn 11, but it should be easy enough to find out if the 5/10 rule fits. Apparently 3-hex is max?
• Tile ownership is permanent for the life of a city. No growing into an enemy's territory, and earlier cities will consume tiles you might plan for later nearby cities (like a resource node, for instance).

[Xilren's Twin]

Turn 178; one rival left and i have expanded my beach head to 3 cities.  Currently fielding about 25 units and each turn starts
with me shooting about 10 times from various cities, forts and magic towers at wandering monsters.  Making about 120 gold 10
food surplus, 90 mana and 75 research per turn.  Only one spell research button remaining.  Wish i could use the higher level
spells but pretty much every turn im countering a Summon Dragon or Rain of Fire spell.

Been spending a lot of gold on perks for my high level units (list under spoiler).  Perks are only applicable to certain unit
types and if you upgrade an unit they keep all perks and level up bonuses.  Once  you have any special building that grants perks
in your empire, any unit you have can then buy it so not much point to building more than one per special hex type.

I think i can wrap this up before turn 200.
Edit: Just unlock the research for the spell of unity.  1000 research points, 5000 mana to cast.
Edit 2: Eleven Sharpshooters are the bomb; 36 ranged attack (half missle half elemental) high move, a self heal and speed buff, and a ranged attack that roots the target.  Cost 700.

[Threash]

Stupid city defenses need to shoot automatically when there is only one target in range.  Way to much waiting in the late turns, it's becoming frustrating.

[Sky]

There's also a Nivrel armor I got in my newest settler-built city; 175g for +40 missile +50 elemental, built on a nivrel resource node.

My original army (the ranger and vet duo) both have the perk to move in rugged terrain which is AWESOME. And a correction: I'm on turn 143!

[Xilren's Twin]

Victory on turn 198.  Finally tally, 53 cities.  Got to see some of the other gods champion units in cities i took over, but still need wanted to drop 700 to use any of them.
Next game im going undead since the flying skeleton ship is cool, plus the aforementioned skeletons, zombies, ghosts and bats.  I will attempt to actually clear another dimension since by the late game they were much more of a pain then the rival mages.  Also will try clearing the sea mob spawns earlier.  Steam says ive already put 18 hours into it so im definately got my money's worth.

[Threash]

I got some paladins of life, they are pretty much unstoppable.

[Sky]

I just got my first assassins...and I had to exploit the AI to do it. I'm juuust about mopped up the wild little corner left in my settled area, tons of elementals in there so it's taken a while. Converged my two armies because as soon as Operation Mop is done, they turn north and stomp the pesky mage who keeps asking me for money every 10 turns or so. Saving for the assassins, I had about 600 and she asked for 350. Eff it, I say, war it is and damn the poor footing. Next turn I click peace and she is heavily in favor, despite not taking any other concessions. I'd like to think it's clever AI who has been bluffing me before finally overplaying her hand, but thus far the AI hasn't impressed me enough to believe that (but it's cool for my imagination, anyway).

I'm approaching ten hours, and it's been late nights since it was released, so that's worth $20 imo. Still a ton of units I haven't seen, and the huge maps are pretty big...after my last western push before I recalled that army, I slipped a bat through and he's almost circumvented teh globe.