Test games played

[Nelphine]

Will do as soon as I get back to my computer.

Also, I haven't gone and proper checked, but it appeared the defeated AI had at least 6 cities remaining when they were defeated, and they were gnolls and had wolf riders or jackal riders in most of their cities (as that's how many strong neutral gnoll cities were on the unexplored continents/islands by the time I got there, and the AI who had defeated Ss'ra also had several gnoll cities in that area). So I'm really confused as to how they were defeated now. Ill see if I can get the autosave for that too.

Edit: my guess is more that the new towers aren't being counted as a lair on one side or for some reason have different creatures. I've never seen a chaos dark elf break towers this early - they generally don't have remotely enough strategic strength until they get stacks of 9 chimera, and I haven't seen any chimera at all.

[Seravy]

Turns out the problem was I didn't run the artfix.bat after updating it to work with the new tower number. As a result, at the time of map generation, only the first 6 towers had a Myrran copy of the dungeon entry. The rest simply had no dungeon and were open from the start.

Ouch, this means I have to start over my halfling game. I was doing well, too, no other wizards on my continent, only 1 contacted and lawful in 1404...I was able to overextend and get away with it, that isn't too common.

The defeated wizard issue sounds like a strategic rating bug.

Edit : Uploaded the fixed version.

Early broken towers (if not bugged) usually are the work of Demons or Air Elementals guarding it in a large quantity. We might want to consider looking into the possibility of specifically ban these monsters from towers. (or raise the minimal budget high enough that 9 of either is still too weak to reach that amount - which would mean 2251 as the lowest tower budget)


...actually, towers are currently 2050-4450 so that would only require a 200 increase. Might as well do it.

[Nelphine]

If you can I'd love to see something for towers where it isn't a straight equal chance for everything.

Something like rolling 3d6 gives you a range from 3-18 but the vast majority is between 8 and 13.

Anyway I'd like to see a range from 2251 to 4000 but with majority between 2800 and 3400.

[Nelphine]

Description of Altar of Peace, when choosing it for research, is still the old astral gate description. Right clicking on the spell gives the correct description.

[Nelphine]

No issues so far (up to around 1407) since the fix for the towers to be on both planes. Except that this is the first time I've ever seen all 5 of us (on Lunatic) have been practically the same on the overall F4 graph. AI still has issues with huge landmasses. Altar of peace (aside from previous post) seems to work correctly, haven't noticed any other wonky changes in strategic combat, but due to the huge landmass problems, its hard to tell if the AI decision making is working correctly. Should have done fair again, but I've been doing that most of the time recently so wanted to switch it up.

[Nelphine]

Argh, I hate Warp Node so much! 2 Maniacal Death opponents, and my whole power structure is collapsing.

Admittedly it's a weakness in my playstyle, but it's only 1407. I don't even have disenchant area yet. (Not that I would use it if I did; my opponents reliably warp at least 1 node per turn, and 1 is a specialist; without Aether Binding, and I have no sorcery books, it would cost me far far more to dispel than it costs them to cast AND they would instantly re-warp.)

Only answer: Full 'raze everything' offense. I've taken out 15 cities so far, including 1 fortress (but he's back, and I don't know where).

But my power income is dropping like a rock. Good chance I won't even HAVE a positive mana income soon.

Edit: Huh. Just realized 3 of my opponents have Guardian. Explains why my bezerkers have been getting hit harder than expected against trolls and jackal riders.

[Seravy]

Started a new Halfling game.

Starting position was worse than the previous two (the one lost to the bug and the one lost to forgetting to properly configure the recording software) - on one side a tower was blocking my access to land, on the other the continent was snakey with a neutral fairly close and an enemy wizard on the other end. I was only able to plant the two starting settlers and that exhausted all space - and they were in pop 8 and 13, respectively.

Since the start wasn't good, I wanted to get over the early game quickly and played fast - but I wasn't trying to lose or anything, just didn't spend too much time thinking. Halflings are pretty straightforward anyway - you need slingers and heroism on them.

The other wizard was Sorcery but didn't have Guardian Wind that early (I expected that, it's not a starting pick for the AI) so I attacked. This didn't work out very well - it seems Expert AI is now good enough to beat me under these conditions. They had way more units than me (buffed slinger is not that easy to produce, takes 3 turn each with only heroism) and while mine were better, I couldn't afford attacking in smaller stacks due to confusion (slingers only have 7 resistance) - lost several units due to that. Having a large stack for all my cities, plus for offense, this early, wasn't a realistic goal. I suppose it could have been different if I had a node or two to raise my skill and mana income.

Soon a wizard showed up from the other direction so I didn't even try to use a ship to get around the tower, but they were peaceful so no threat. I also peeked at Myrror with a Palar Travel Settler.
At that point I was 100% sure this game is unwinnable so I didn't even put effort into defending my capital, and lost : the Myrran wizard was mono-sorcery, and the peaceful was mono-Chaos, on top of the one being my enemy also being mono-Sorcery. These are the realms Halflings are the weakest against.

Overall, while my starting position was below average, I felt this game was a bit too hard for Expert difficulty. The graph of the Myrran wizard was quite alarming - there might be a real problem there but the game was too short to really know anything about that.

Game was recorded : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzmhukHW...e=youtu.be

[Nelphine]

Definitely a game where I would use a fortress strike, and then a sweeper to pick off all their doomstacks, and basically ignore city defense.

However, I also would highly suggest using halfling swordsmen. With heroism they're fantastic. (I've held off entire doomstacks with 1 halfling swordsmen and city walls.)

Resistance is an issue (much like bezerkers), but as you found - slingers are too expensive for what they do. They're great on defense, but I'd MUCH rather get a stack of swordsmen rather than the first slinger.

Also, if you are going life buffs, you need to choose spellweaver. Otherwise, as you mentioned, it's too expensive to buff enough units. And yes I think that's a reasonable ask even at expert. Advanced I'd be ok with you not taking it, but not expert.

[Nelphine]

Anyone have feedback for my warp node issue? Specifically, anything I might do differently (whether going forward, or to plan better against this next time)?

[Seravy]

The only real solution I found against warp node is, if I know an enemy has it and is Maniacal/ruthless, I don't meld the nodes I conquer.
If you already did, that's unfortunate - the only thing you can do is to leave them without a garrison and dispel in hopes of someone else melding them. I wouldn't bother, better to just build power producing buildings in cities to counter the problem. Of course with your playstyle you might have so many nodes that it's a real problem.