New experimental version

[Seravy]

Uhh, found a pretty nasty bug.

EXP13B
-Fixed EXP11D bug : The AI can't attack very weak targets that have a strength below the minimal army strength the AI uses for attacking.
-The “player wins” feature now considers population the same way as the other 3 astrologer stats.
-The “player wins” condition is now checked once every 4 turns instead of 8

...I'm wondering now, if the game is this hard and the AI was unable to attack my poorly defended early cities, how it is going to be now that it's fixed.

Maybe we need to further reduce AI advantages? I don't want to play another 10 games to find out

[Nelphine]

That might explain why I found some of my cities were rarely attacked. What was the cutoff? If I had 6 spearmen (orc, recruit) would that be a valid target? Doesn't matter, that should help the aggressiveness that arnuz was talking about.

[Seravy]

Something like 1.5 halberdiers I think.

[Arnuz]

a shortcut to open the city list

Not sure what you mean. If the "Cities" button on the main screen, you activate that with the "T" key, ever since the base game.

- going back to city list if a city screen opened from there

If you right click to change production, it already does that.
If you need to change farmers, unfortunately, it doesn't.
But what if the user doesn't want to go back? Sometimes you only need to change one city.

- the possibility to buy directly from city screen, ideally (more complicated I guess) - maybe from the right click?

Like, by pressing the B button there? I'll check if that is possible or not.

I meant from the city list, not the city screen, sorry. The idea is to buy quickly - for when the game is advanced, and managing all the cities becomes painful. So the quote above: right click returns indeed to the city list, which would be perfect for what I'm suggesting, but you'd need to find a way to activate the buy from there...

Arnuz, if you get more Monet from conquering (I'm already averaging over 200g, sometimes as high as 500), then it would defeat the purpose of increasing the destruction rate. Things get destroyed and you have to choose what to get (still best to get the amp tower, but doing so means you are negative for the city for some time, which is the purpose of the increased destruction rate - either you buy the other things like sawmills (which is like the 6th building I buy late game), or you take time yo build them. Either way, negative.

Also means if you get lucky and the amp tower doesn't blow up, you're still probably negative, which is even more important.

As usual we are speaking about different timeframes of course when you are invading, once the AI has declared war to you, then there's no issue with that. But for an early attacker, seeing the sawmill and foresters' guild go is a major PITA, it means that the city has wasted 15 turns unless you buy both... And 350 gold in 1402-3 is quite more important than in 1412-3! That's what I'm suggesting. I don't think it defeats the purpose of the change, which is to delay the attacker, what happens anyway - in the old system, without razed buildings, you could start buying mages directly, that's quite different...

[Nelphine]

Ehhh, anything you get from the ai is something you're profiting from their cheating bonuses from. Realistically, just getting the city, with no buildings at all, is a huge bonus. Don't attack little things so early, and you'll probably get at least one building. Amp towers etc are just the most extreme form of that but even sawmills are hugely important.

Anything that discourages super early attacks, and makes neutrals weaker, is a good game feature in my eyes.

[Seravy]

Halfway through the Expert difficulty game I believe the recent changes bumped up difficulty far more than expected.

Or am I wrong in assuming Expert should still be winnable with a random generated wizard? (I rolled a pretty average 7 chaos, 3 nature, 1 death, tactician)

I had a good start (2 free nodes for sprites, early breaking of towers, dwarven cities on the other side, an ally...and even found a Stone Giant spell in the tower.

But then the two strongest wizards declared war randomly (one for Chaotic, the other just attacked - as AI attacks are more efficient, it's ultra-hard to avoid losing a city, but that starts a war.) and I couldn't fight both.

...but two wars after a good start and having a rare summon in 1405 should be enough for Expert, or not?

(I haven't lost but I'm slowly losing territory instead of gaining any, and meanwhile the Myrran AI is already about as powerful as everyone on Arcanus combined (including me) - maybe expert shouldn't use the agressive myrran settler AI tactic?)

...maybe opening towers is just suicide in the early game now? The player clearly can't afford fighting on two planes at once. The Myrran wizard knows Famine and I'm playing Nomads

Or random wizards just aren't meant for Expert. I guess they never worked on Extreme either, although they did work on Hard and this is technically halfway between the two.

...perhaps I should keep playing anyway. I already have Flame Strike...but not the 72 skill to use it. Need 11 more and probably won't be able to afford the gold to buy two towers, nor can I afford using power to raise it. Will probably take like 20 turns to reach the 72...

btw Myrran AI is Dark Elves, the supposedly slow race...well, with Stream of Life they're as fast as lizardmen :D

[Nelphine]

I think the problem is that (synergistic) retorts are better than books. Strategies with few retorts are noticeably slower (and therefore weaker) than those with many retorts. Try another random wizard, but make sure you have a minimum of 3 picks of retorts that work together (so taking conjurer and warlord doesn't count as 3 picks for this purpose because they don't work together; they work in random, but they don't directly synergize.)

[Settemio]

I noticed Flight has changed, and I think it's a bug because I used the forum search tool and found no mention of it being a deliberate adjustment: Overland movement is still raised to 3, but combat movement now remains what it was before Flight (for example, Zombies or Dwarven Swordsmen have the benefit of not being attacked by non-flying units, but still only move 1 tile per combat turn).

Is that an actual change? Bug? Am I just mis-remembering? I thought just recently I was able to give Zombies 3 speed with Flight during combat. It wouldn't raise on the first turn I cast Flight, but every turn after I believe it raised movement and each attack cost 1.5 moves, accordingly. In fact, the more I think about this the more I am sure it is a change because I remember learning that I needed to attack with Zombie first to get two attacks in, then cast Flight on it, because if I cast Flight first it would only get one attack that turn because it only had 1 movement remaining.

[Seravy]

Try another random wizard, but make sure you have a minimum of 3 picks of retorts that work together

I know but that used to be the requirement to stand a chance at Impossible or completely overwhelm Extreme just a year ago. Something definitely isn't right with difficulties if I need to do that to stand a chance at Expert. Is Expert as strong as Impossible was now?

Flight : bug.

EXP13C
-Fixed ECP11B bug : Flight doesn't grant 3 movement in combat.

[Nelphine]

The problem is that over the past year, you've had several of us playing different strategies that worked on impossible; but all of us were using 4-6 retorts. You didn't like how we were doing, so that ends up being where impossible was shifted. I'd say right now, lunatic would need 5 retorts to play (I use 6, but I play a long term game so that the AI can get very rares). That means 3-4 for master is reasonable, and at least 2 for expert - remembering that it needs to be 2 retorts that are meant to be used together.

This also means I'm sure each of those numbers can be reduced by at least 1 for someone who has just the right strategy. But a random wizard isn't going to have the right strategy - not only are you likely to be missing retorts, you're also not always going to have a set of books designed to work together (7 death 3 nature 1 chaos? 1 book is almost never a strong pick with the exception of omniscient builds).

I'd say you can probably still do expert with random wizards, but it's going to be very tough. Which is probably a reasonable place for the game to be.