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[gimli]

Mana income in this game is insane. I have nothing to spend it on.

True, I am focusing on summons as a druid [ofc], with only like 8 cities atm [+1 captured dragon city], and there's no way to run out of mana. 4 horned gods + lot of lower tier summons are at my service.

2 things btw:

- The strategical AI is bad imo [I am playing on Emperor], the tactical AI is slightly better.
- High tier AoE "caster" units are extremely powerful....4 horned gods / dragons [or other tier 4 AoE casters, I suppose there are much more, and I've only played as a druid so far] + 2 heroes in 1 army = roflstomping everything so easily...

[ed boy]

Mana income in this game is insane. I have nothing to spend it on.

That was the case in the previous games as well, where the only way to spend your mana was to cast spells, which could only be done with your leader and had the bottleneck of casting points.

At least in the third game there seems to be an additional outlet in the form of some units produced in cities needing mana as part of their costs.

How is diplomacy looking in this one? Can you still buy whatever you want from the AI with your unused piles of mana late game?

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   I was playing the second map of the elven court campaign and the end of it was just me stomping around with a full stack of horned gods autobattling everything to death. I partly blame that on how the campaign works as enemies don't seem to "activate" till you meet them which means the last group was acting as if I was still mid game when I was end game.

[Mindmaker]

- The strategical AI is bad imo [I am playing on Emperor], the tactical AI is slightly better.

It's especially bad at diplomacy.
Draconian Dreadnaught declares war one me the first moment I see him. 20 turns later and he still has to take any agressive action against me, other than removing city enchantments.

That was the case in the previous games as well, where the only way to spend your mana was to cast spells, which could only be done with your leader and had the bottleneck of casting points.

This is not true.

Previous games had a lot of permanent unit enchantments that had upkeep. This games enchantments are "for this combat only".
Only a handful global enchantments, which rather low cost.
I summon heavy classes may be able to use it to their full capacity, but I haven't yet played them.
Sources for mana generation are rather common.
The previous game let you funnel excess mana into reasearch (well more like it let you convert excess research into mana, since research was more important most of the time.

I'm currently using it as my main currency for diplomacy.
Guess I'll try a more magic focused class next and see how it goes.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

TotalBiscuit has his review of it up and he likes it. Also he got the summon dire penguin spell during his video.

[gimli]

- The strategical AI is bad imo [I am playing on Emperor], the tactical AI is slightly better.

It's especially bad at diplomacy.
Draconian Dreadnaught declares war one me the first moment I see him. 20 turns later and he still has to take any agressive action against me, other than removing city enchantments.

Yep it's kinda FUBAR atm. Example: I've met with the Draconians firstly, like 10 turns later -hell knows why- he decided to declare war on me.
2 wtf moments:
1. He was neutral to me with zero negative modifiers. Oh well no problems, he wants my cities?...but ->
2. He had a mighty empire with a whopping 2 cities, while I had 7. I guess it's needless to say that he was removed from the game quite fast?

It looks like that -as usual in v1.0 games- the beta testing has failed @ epic levels.

PS. I would like to see more diplo options later on, after they manage to fix the diplo AI as well + a much more detailed Empire information panel would be good to have as well.

Guess I'll try a more magic focused class next and see how it goes.

Like I've said I am playing as a druid right now, so I am casting spells all the time: mostly summons and ofc enhancements so basically all my spells need some mana / turn to maintain. I never ever ran out of mana. If you keep expanding at a balanced level, mana won't be a problem.

[Retropunch]

To be honest, the more I play the more the balance falls apart. I think this has pissed me off more than usual, because (as gimli son of gloin says) it's ALWAYS like this with 1.0 releases. I know it'll eventually get patched a lot, and that more will be added/the AI will be fixed, but it feels as though they only got someone to beta test the first 2 hours and were like 'yup it's fine'.

If anyone finds any good match ups in terms of player v AI classes/races for interesting games please post though, as I find that often with these kinda games certain match-ups lead to more interesting games.

[Mindmaker]

Turn 43. Slowly all good settling positions have been used up and now we're just closing gaps.
I'm done with my unit trees and I'm really dissapointed. A lot of the units are just straigh upgrades in terms of HP, attack and defense.

Draconian Dreadnought still isn't attacking me.
Talk about cold war.

[thepodger]

I am seriously disappointed with the game.  Like Elemental 1.0 disappointed.  Everything technically works, but the units are almost all carbon copies with a +1 or -1 here and different abilities gained at elite tiers.  Even those are mostly mirrored resists or stuns or what have you.  Magic is extremely underwhelming, mana is ludicrously abundant, no permanent enchantments, few global spells, and the elemental differences are few.

Races are pretty much reskins of each other, there's no meaningful differences between goblin irregulars and elven irregulars.

Anyone know if its mod friendly?  If so then it might eventually get interesting.

[Retropunch]

I am seriously disappointed with the game.  Like Elemental 1.0 disappointed.

Woaaah there, that's quite a statement! Elemental was one of the worst releases ever.
I don't think it's that bad, and the different racial traits are kinda interesting, it's just that they've obviously not had the time/resources/testing available to properly differentiate between the different races to the extent of making them feel very different. Most TBS games don't though really - and mostly because it's just so hard to do.

I'm just annoyed that we'll need to wait for a few patches before it gets to a point of being polished. So many games are released KNOWING that it'll need a ton of patches, and to me that seems like a really terrible business model. They're basically charging full price for an advanced beta, and although I don't think this is terrible by any stretch, it's still annoying

[Neonivek]

I actually knew the "All the races are the same" problem ahead of time... because they didn't hide it.

[Mindmaker]

[...] it's just that they've obviously not had the time/resources/testing available to properly differentiate between the different races to the extent of making them feel very different.

It's more likely been done on purpose.

[MoLAoS]

[...] it's just that they've obviously not had the time/resources/testing available to properly differentiate between the different races to the extent of making them feel very different.

It's more likely been done on purpose.

Dominions does a great job of making the races different, and they only have like 1 or 2 guys working on it. Warlords BattleCry is similarly good at it. Although to be fair neither game is super balanced.

A lot of non-super-niche games simply care too much about balance rather than faction diversity.

[Mindmaker]

That's what I meant.
I believe they have been inspired by some of the other Fantasy TBS in recent times and have been trying to get a lot of new customers, while still luring in fans of the series with the brand name.

[Retropunch]

Regardless of whether they did it on purpose or not (and I don't believe they did, by evidence of them making some changes - see pg.1 of this discussion) what I/others are saying is that they should be more different, and I'm sure they would have been more different if they had the time/resources.

I sympathize with the difficulty of balancing it though as big changes to the game play of each race would have meant tons more work in balancing it and creating new mechanics. That being said, they play way too similarly for it to have lasting appeal of playing through the races. I'm already stretching the depths of tactics and I've only had it for a few days. That's not to say that I'm not enjoying it, it's just pretty shallow compared to what I hoped - and a lot of this is down to the homogeneous races.