I think it's about time we make a decision on which of the experimental features we want and make experimental the new "main" version.

So without further ado, we need to consider :

1. Stability.
I think this is fine - I'm not getting any more crashes and weird bugs than in the normal version, and enough time have elapsed so the major problems are most likely all fixed (such as when the AI used Spell Binding without knowing it)


2. AI Doomstack.
Having played against it, I feel the AI's doomstack feature is a great success. Those stacks keep a lot of my troops busy, and if unexpected, even destroy cities. I need significantly more troops to defend myself and this makes attacking the AI a lot more difficult - something the same units left in garrisons never achieved.

3. AI More cautious attacks
Although it's easier to "scare" an AI away from attacking my cities, this didn't lower difficulty, in fact increased it. The troops not daring to attack my heavily defended places will head towards a place with thinner garrisons, where they'll cause trouble. Maintaining a full 9 garrisson of strong unit everywhere is a major strain on economy, but leaving weak points is too risky. Also, the doomstacks just don't care - they are powerful enough to attack anything, and win the battle most of the time. Oh, and the units not finding a city to attack keep staying around and will either steal my lairs and nodes, or cause general inconvenience by preventing use of engineers, shamans, and organizing my troops. In the end I have to attack them anyway, giving them the first turn to cast and shoot.
So I feel this change is also a success.

4. AI Overland Spellcasting
Can't say I played enough to be 100% sure each detail in this is perfect yet, but having easy to modify source code is a big improvement, as we can address problems much easier now. At the very least, being able to use "naval" spells, disjunction priority depending on the intended target, time stop no longer being a curse, "cheap buff stacking" being an actual spell group and tactic, and so on should be massive improvements. Out of these, I especially do not have enough experience facing Disjunction - I usually didn't get a chance to depend on a large number of global enchantments in my games to test this.

5. New banishment rules
This one is where I have most doubts. At the very least I can say I feel less tempted to hit capitals first, which is a step in the right direction. Doing so is still a good strategy and is well rewarded, but not worth it if the capital is very well defended and beating it would cost most or all of my forces - this hasn't been the case before, as banishment was so severe, it was worth it even if it meant losing half my armies - while the wizard couldn't use combat spells, I was able to conquer anything with just a few swordmen tier troops and combat spell spam.

6. AI difficulty
This is the hardest to adjust but I think adding a 6th difficulty level (see the other thread) should make the game playable no matter what, as it gives more fine-grained options for the player to pick the difficulty they can comfortably play.

7. Suppress Magic is strength 500 counter effect.
Not sure about this one, while this reduction is needed to retain original functionality (most very rares are unaffected but commons, uncommons and rares suffer), it might make it took weak. (a 200 cost spell will still have a 40% chance to work which is not that low) I haven't faced this spell in any game and when I had it, I didn't cast it as I was already winning the game by far.

8. Cheaper summoning costs for rares and very rares.
Also having doubts - it certainly plays better and the AI is likely to also have them and even build doomstacks of them so it can't be said it's a "no brainer" tactic as I originally was worried about - yes, I might have that 9 archangel stack but getting it is way slower than having 3 normal stacks each carried by one archangel, and this latter has 3 times the map coverage and mobility. In a situation when I have to race against an enemy in summoning creatures, waiting for my 9 doomstack just buys enough time for the AI to produce two similar doomstacks of their own. Still, in the scenario of having these creatures vs opponents who don't have them, summoning is an easy way to win, and this change makes Spell Blast even more crippling then before, as it prevents the use of these units until Disjunction is researched and high casting skill is reached.

9. AI frontier town choice for summoning
Clearly works better, I've had my lost city filled by 2 Gorgons by the time my armies reached it to take it back, while the doomstack already went to attack another one.

10. New racial unrest table, no change of race by Move Fortress
I don't have enough experience with this, but it should be an improvement considering the move fortress abuse was a massive unfair advantage to the human payer

Since I'm doing lots of discussions I thought I should do something lighter.

What are your top 3 or 5 favorite spells, and why?

1) Demon Lord! They're just AWESOME. All my best memories of this game revolve around how awesome these guys are. Summoning demons, draining life, surrounded by zombie hordes. Love them.

2) Time Stop! I get to stop time. Soooo cool.

3) Hydra. 9 heads, eat everything, kill it and it gets back up again. 

4) Crusade. Champion units are so like reading about your favorite swat team, Alicia deVries, or whatever military book is your fancy.

5) Create Artifact. Heck just itembuilding in general. I used to spend hours designing super cool items. Awesome awesome feature in the game.

I've been thinking and I believe there should be one more difficulty level.

Currently we have :

Easy - The player receives some advantages and the AI is handicapped. No challenge, even for first time players, as long as they know the basics about how to play a strategy game.
Normal - Minimal AI advantage. No advantages for the player and the AI is not holding back in basic gameplay, but can't use some of the nastiest tricks available. No myrran wizard, and no random AI wizards, everyone is default.
Hard - Medium AI advantage. The AI is not holding back at all, except for one or two particularly evil tactics that abuse even higher AI resource advantages (stasis spam). AI wizards can be custom, and there is a Myrran wizard. Very challenging for average players and mildly challenging for veterans playing weaker strategies or random wizards.
Extreme -Large AI advantage, AI goes all out on strategies. Unforgiving difficulty level where only strong strategies can win and large mistakes result in a loss.
Impossible -As above but even harder, on top of the best strategies and perfect, flawless gameplay, you also need luck to win.


So...what's missing?
Well, first of all, there is no difficulty level that's like "Normal" but has random enemy wizards and myrran wizards and offers a fair challenge for average players. Hard has that all but already gives a lot of bonus to AI, is probably too difficult for what it is meant to be.
Second, there is no "convenient, for fun" difficulty level for veteran players. Hard is too easy - unless you go for a particularly crappy setup, play poorly and have bad luck, you'll overwhelm the game. Extreme is kinda too difficult - I've been losing more than half my games on it when playing average wizards - not weak ones, but not the "top tier" impossible builds either. There should be a difficulty where average wizards will result in an interesting game and I don't think that exists at the moment. Looking at the raw numbers, extreme gets twice as much bonus as hard which is a lot.

So...this is what I think might be ideal instead :

Novice - Same as easy
Mage - Same as Normal
Wizard - Random wizards, Myrran wizard, but AI resources in between Normal and old Hard.
Lord - Like current Extreme but resource bonus between it and Hard.
Lunatic - Current Extreme.
Master - Current Impossible.

(other suggestions for naming levels are welcome)

If we decide to do this, we'll need to look at each individual detail difficulty level affects while doing it.
See http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...Difficulty for more (albeit probably outdated on resources) information on the effect of existing levels.

So, with multiple already-annoying image-hosting services deciding they don't actually want or need a user base anymore, it's getting difficult to find decent third-party image hosting options.  Several people have asked, so I figured I'd at least let you know what seems to be working for me, especially as I not only suspect the company that does it won't cut off third-party hosting options in the foreseeable future ... but you almost certainly already have an account with them!  There are probably official ways to do this that may or may not be more straightforward, but this is the method I've been using, in probably-unnecessary detail:

1) Go to Blogger.com (This is Google's blog-hosting site.)  Click on "Sign in" in the upper right-hand corner.  Google will ask you to log in to your account or confirm your password if you don't have a blog with them already.

2) That should get you to a page that looks something like this:

Research build

Halfings + 9 sorcery + omniscient + sage master + specialist

You get a 44.5% bonus to city research which combines with the halfling research bonus. You also get a 33% and 15% research reduction for sorcery spells. 
Take aether binding as a guaranteed spell and cast that as soon as it is researched (which won't be long) meaning you don't need to put any mana into research or SP for half the game. 

I tried and won this on extreme, but not with halflings which I think would be difficult to kill anything early on (how do halflings ever kill anything without heroism?).


Heavenly Light power build

High Elves + 5 chaos + 3 nature + 2 life + omniscient + cult leader

Choose heavenly light for power and sprites and fire elemental as starting spells for early nodes/neutrals.
Cast heavenly light as soon as possible in all cities for 7 power per turn due to the cult leader and omniscient power bonuses. 

The 2 nature give you a small growth rate boost which high elves need. It bothers me that the second nature book doesn't do anything with omniscient and you have to get another 3 to make any difference. All the other book types give you a bonus for each one. It would be good to have a growth boost for each extra nature book and it would make the slow races a bit less painful to play with.

I tried this and am winning on extreme at the moment.

As an aside...why would anyone choose Guardian when heavenly light gives you pretty much the same bonus and pays for itself in the end? It's two picks as well.


Klackon production build

Klackon + 8 death books + tactician + warlord + omniscient
You get the klackon production bonus per worker and 40% extra from omniscient
Use this to rush your opponents with halberdiers that will have +3 defence over normal halberdiers

I've not tried this, but with increased population growth for Klackons in the latest version I think this would overwhelm opponent wizards quite quickly. 

Any better ideas?

Is Doomsday overpowered? The corruption isn't too bad, but the unrest is crippling. On my newly conquered size 15 orc city I had an unrest of 12. Luckily for me I have Stream of Life otherwise it would be game over.
Other wizards only seem to get a small amount of unrest in comparison (I'm playing on extreme)

Wave of Despair just seems to almost kill everything in one go. Am I missing something to combat this? At least with Flame Strike you can use Resist Elements or Bless, but with Wave of Despair it just seems to win every battle.

I looked it up and the formula is 240/(2+number of targets), so I suppose the idea is to always attack in stacks of 9? Although that means the spell is even more cost effective. 

It seems a lot better than Flame Strike though and I thought Chaos is meant to be the best direct damage realm. Wave of Despair is cheaper and by the time it is in use units often have more defense than resistance.


Mystic surge is pretty crazy. I got 12 enchantments on my beserkers the first time I tried it.

Hey,

I was wondering if we might have enough interest to resurrect our annual Realms Beyond ESPN Fantasy Football league?

Anyone who fancies it, let me know and let's see if we can make it work!

1) TT
2) dtay
3) David Corperial
4) Cheater Hater
5) sunrise089
6) Dark Savant
7) Kuro

I'm considering to have at least one hero that comes with this ability as default.
I'm satisfied with most existing heroes however, so it's not easy to add it anywhere.

This is my best idea for now :

Rename "Orc Warrior" into "Orc Archer". Replace thrown with a bow attack, sword with a bow slot, add Supply Commander.
Pros :
-more archer heroes, ability makes sense on an archer hero.
-gets rid of redundancy : barbarian and orc warrior are both 0 fame melee thrown heroes.

Cons :
-existing hero sprites don't show the hero wielding a bow. (tho this isn't an issue for the optional portrait files where it'll be replaced anyway.)
-gets rid of the only 0 fame melee hero with a random ability slot
-means every melee hero that can attack flying units will come with Might as a default ability (maybe change the Barbarian to not have it but get a random one? Or maybe two?)
-overall, number of melee heroes in 0 fame tier becomes a bit too low (might want to move the Thief back to fame 0? I miss her, was so amazing in the early game...also fame 5 has too many melee heroes.)
-gets rid of the "stronger starting stats without might" role the hero has at the moment as an alternative to hiring the Barbarian.

Not sure how much fame should this hero require - Supply Commander is probably too good for 0 fame.

As you might have seen in various places (on the Discord, in a game design thread on the forums somewhere?), I've been working on the design for a game on and off for a while.  That game is one that attempts to distill the main aspects of a 4X Strategy Game into a board that's a line (so it's One-Dimensional).  However, I've been struggling a lot trying to get the basic coding for the design done (mostly due to lack of motivation, as well as a lack of experience in Unity and/or other game design tools), but I still want to try the actual game design to see if it still works (as getting the video game version of it will take a while)

The rules of this game seem relatively simple (at least before I've bolted a million special rules on top of them--I have to keep stopping myself from doing so), so they could work in a forum game sense.  The main thing however is that fog of war is an important part, as you can't see the whole board at one time.  My thought is that I could be a moderator with the full picture, and just show people what they can see (while obviously helping with rules and such).

1.  Are people interested in this?  I know this would take some work on my part as a moderator (especially since I'm sure I've missed a million things in the rules), but I think I'm willing to do it.
2.  Here is my current ruleset--the first page is a coherent ruleset (some of the details are missing--notably I still need to come up with exact techs, and finetune a lot of the numbers), while the last page is more of a notes section.  Is there anything I'm obviously missing, or any feedback people want to give?

Thanks in advance for any feedback/interest you might give

Edit: If you've missed it, my rules are pretty solid now, so I'm looking for people who actively want to play the game to test it.

Hey folks. Since we don't have much going on here I thought I'd invite you to my next game on the total war forums. It's a reiteration of my Swords and Sorcery without the Swords setup, which is a highly improved version of my New Horizons Game. Signups are a link to the previous game of this type on the TWF are here. They are a pretty good group of folks over there, and I tend to institute our rules so you should be pretty familiar with the way things work. Hope to see you there.