I'll share a few of my thoughts on the new version. I've only played a couple games so far, 2 with D'tesh (leader as well), and partway through my first game with Austrin.
First, I'm not sure how much stability has improved, but then again I never had horrible crashing problems in 1.2 either, perhaps from playing without animals. My first game with D'Tesh crashed before turn 50, after which I restarted because my starting position sucked anyway. Second game again had an early crash (sub 50), but worked fine on reload until 400 or so. Austrin crashed around 100, don't know about reload working yet. I've no idea what the early crashes were about, but the late game D'Tesh crash felt like it was memory-leak related as things were starting to become sluggish. Still, 300 turns between crashes isn't bad.
- D'Tesh is even more easy-mode now. Playing on Immortal, there were maybe 50 turns in the early going that I wasn't in first place. Soon I was at twice the score of everyone else and simply cruising along. I NEVER do that well on immortal. His two major weaknesses were removed (horrible city defense early, and death immune units), so he basically has no weakness now. In 1.2 Hyborem would have easily destroyed him, now if an AI summoned the Infernals I'd just laugh.
- The dynamic promotion text on D'Teshi Affinity doesn't seem to be working.
- This has already been addressed, but it is quite fun popping every lair and ruin with your invisible scouts. Lots of free stuff, and watch as several civs die to the literal flood of Pit Beasts, Cyklops, Axemen, Drowns, Ogres, Stoneskin Ogres (At turn 30 no less, bye-bye Prespur!), and Warriors you unleash upon the world.
- Yes, even in 1.2 Ogres ( and the aforementioned Stoneskin Ogre at Prespur, he had plenty of backup though
) would waste all their time ranged attacking units and never actually killing them.
- Another odd thing is that around turn 350 (epic speed) I had a 1500 score while the remaining AI's were clumped around 700. Honestly they still seem to have issues expanding, as there was tons of free space on the map. Except for the half I controlled with my network of 75-100 forts. Watching the mini-map light up like a Christmas tree at the start of every turn from all those commanders casting Flay Flesh was fun.
- D'Tesh doesn't seem to be limited in cities. Even though the vessels can no longer be built, you can still capture cities, and you receive a free vessel every time you raze a city. The pop cap in cities is too low, it's just enough to work the 3 tile ring. At the very least I think The Obsidian Spire should have a much high cap than the other, subordinate cities. I had a stack of 30 slaves working tiles since my five cities were pop capped, and I still had four AI's to kill.
- Anyway... once you research KotE and get a couple slaves, the game is basically over with him.
- I like the Austrin, but the health changes (no fresh water, deer, pig, fish, and gold in the area, so all kinds of tech needs) and horrible improvement build speeds means I've gotten little accomplished by turn 115, I believe is when it crashed last night.
- On the other hand, the 3 great people I've popped from lairs have kept my economy afloat even with having 4 total cities, none connected to anything (my other cities or resources, I have deer and fish at this point at my capital), and working unimproved tiles. Building workers on site will take forever, and they have other needs as well, while building workers at my capital also takes forever, due to high unhealth, and having only 2 improved tiles to work, again deer and fish.
- I know you guys wanted to slow down early city growth, but you overshot IMO. This is verging on boring in that game, although capturing cities and lairs with a couple explorers carrying attack falcons is proving amusing. Growth has always been capped by happiness, why change it now? It seems to me that limiting where you can build improvements, base improvement changes, and reversing Agrarianism already removed a lot of the excess food from the game. Changing such a base mechanic as unhealth so drastically seems unwise to me, it effects way too many things to easily account for them all when you decide to do so, and is a perfect candidate for the Law of Unintended Consequences to rise up and bite you in the ass. (IE: The Malakim are screwed now.)
I'm really enjoying 1.3, however, so don't think I'm all negative. Monster and animal changes have been fine for me, no Hill Giants have made themselves a nuisance, Influence wars looks interesting (hasn't had a lot of effect yet though, too early in the Austrin game and the D'Tesh game... well yeah there's no one left to have an influence war against with him, lol ), AI is working with some things better, and I'm still looking forward to playing around with the Grigori and Sidar.
), that objection disappears. I was talking about the current, on par with citizen version. As long as they are valued correctly it's good.
