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

[rk47]

Can't stand the gameplay at mid to late game. Too many units to micromanage with my Goblin Horde. I can feel my head screaming in frustration and then I finally had to concede that I've probably won the game when I had broken into the first alternate realm and planted my first city there.

[Sky]

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.

Hell, I was doing great with some upgraded undead (forget the names, the basic melee and archers) holding my eastern border against a bunch of ellies.

[Lantyssa]

Skeletons?

[Hayduke]

Definitely best for humans since humans late game creatures are kinda bad and really need to use religious units.

That's kind of by design though.  Humans have access to seven religious units and can easily build two (three with more finagling).  Undead and monsters are limited to four and can usually only build one (possibly two).

[Goumindong]

Skeletons?

Skeleton Veterans
Skeleton Snipers

Skeleton Veterans are the worst of all the upgraded basic warrior units though they gain, comparatively, the most. Skeleton Snipers are the best of all the upgraded archer units [and they actually gain the most from upgrading too].

I know that the best option for humans is to start Gold/Gold/Gold/1 point spell and rush your upgraded warriors in the main city[Veterans are stupid strong and all the warriors you produce after making your first smithy get the bonus armor for free which makes your warriors and veterans really strong before enemies have elemental damage] while expanding a gold/food elsewhere. But am unsure on whether or not undead should rush Vets/Snipers or rush to vampires.


Ed: I think the game would actually be better without alternate worlds. They're clunky to manage, pointless to assault and require to you continue expanding into them [because if you don't your opponent will and will gain a city advantage which means a resource advantage] which requires more micro management.

[Threash]

Having to shoot 17 times before even taking my turn once again led me to quitting this game.  Overland combat is also still shitty.

[Goumindong]

Yea, they really need some way to automate functions.

[Lightstalker]

Well.  Improved, to be sure.

Now all we need are:
 -  More of a spell choice - right now everyone gets everything, the trade-off was a classic part of MoM and that's my expectation here.  The religion thing is interesting, but not nearly as deep (it can be ignored entirely).
 -  Better memory management - I've seen it running at about 1.7gb working set, and it has been killed by the OS a few times (huge/impossible game, 275 turns).
 -  All ressurrected units (heros) retain any item boons - Staff of Fireball?  Rez and you get Fireball all the time.  Die with the broom?  Grats, perma flight.  Die with the Mask?  Grats permanent invis.
 -  Better behaved when alt-tabbed - my web based mail client  (and even the input buffer for this form) grinds to a halt when Warlock is running.

Quality of Life:
 -  Auto-fire for cities
 -  Hard Sleep for units / Defend only status
 -  Fullscreen Windowed mode.  
 -  Oh, and do real random names, let us edit the list, or something; eventually all cities get the same name.

Turning off Unity victory condition is a must, but the AI doesn't really know how to grind out a long term win against high-level units.  

[Kail]

I'd add better hotkey support to that list.  I can skip my turn with the enter key, but there's nowhere to click to do the same thing until I've told every unit in my army to sit back down.  I can click the defend button to tell them to do that, but there's no keyboard shortcut that I can see.

An in game civilopedia and clearer tech tree would be nice, too.  I mouse over the werewolf building in the city window and it says something to the effect of "Allows access to noble werewolves and court werewolves" but when I build it, I only get nobles, and have no idea how to unlock court werewolves.  The first time through the game I was kind of confused when I'd take over a city, it would have stuff there built already, but I couldn't use it, until I realized that I'd stomped the prerequisite building during the invasion and had to figure out what that was.

Roads would be nice, too.  Since monster houses can appear inside your territory, it gets to be a pain to defend your lands when things get big, and natural bottlenecks can really muck up troop movements.

But overall, having a lot of fun with this game so far.

[Goumindong]

All improved spaces act as roads and nullify the movement penalties[or more actually, i think they are 1/3rd bar per tile] of the terrain they're sitting on. If you're having trouble moving units around your empire your cities are probably too spaced out or you're in a very open area and so its hard to connect all of them.

There are 18 tiles within the 2 square radius of a city and the maximum city size is around 16-18[you would have to have both population spells to hit this i think]. So if you're building your cities too far away that may be your problem, build them closer

I would certainly like spell research to be redone. Possibly to have spell choices like race choices, even if things are hedged into like 4 elements [plus whatever religious spells you get]

[Wasted]

Some more DLC out for this "return of the elves", adds a new race:

-New race of the Arethi Elves with all its might and glory
-18 new units
-20 brand new city buildings
-Additional new perks and abilities
-New Great Mage – Grand Master Amberon the Dark
-New perks for Great mages:
  Glorious Tactician - Increases the attack power of all units of a Great mage
  Academician – Increases Research point production