If you want to found a relgion, you better get on it fast, even faster then in FFH2.
This has not been my experience. Very frequently (even with poor results from goody huts) I can get all of the holy cities I want. Messing around last night I played to turn 200 (normal speed) on noble and I had all of the holy cities except Esus. I wan't even sacrificing my normal techs as I was invading my neighbor's and their warrior, archer and axeman defended cities with my iron weapon equipped boarding parties maelstrom mages and glorious tsunami spewing cultists.
The problem wasn't luck or me being overpowered, I popped two goody huts (gold from both) a couple of dungeons (mostly big baddies that slaughtered my scouts), and one graveyard early in the game that gave me exploration. The problem was the AI was crippled by those archers that are supposed to be easy to deal with. More specifically, it was the stacks of three archers sitting outside their cities on a hill across the river. The AI couldn't expand, couldn't improve their land and they just kept making things worse for themselves by trying to kill a stack of three archers with a handfull of warriors.
Turn off ranged combat and the problem all but goes away. But ranged combat is fun...
1. The buttons that enable you to cast spells every turn are good, but since they look exacly the same as the regular spell casting buttons
Those are very handy, and very annoying
Different buttons would definately be nice.
[to_xp]Gekko;9031022 said:
archers are supposed to be an annoyance. definitely get the cover promo ASAP, and DEFINITELY do not let them camp on hills, especially forested ones. engage them aggressively, otherwise you'll have them sitting there for a while. you're not alone in the annoyance, but it's actually an engaging one so it's fine imho. after all you gotta admit the little buggers are playing it smart
They cripple the AI players though, and should have something added to their AI to force them to suicide against the adjacent city or unit(s) after a few turns. You never know, they might even win! Even if they all die anything is better than them sitting on the same tile for a hundred turns, unable to kill the defending warrior or lone hunter... bombard target, target heals back up to 100%, bombard target, target heals back up to 100%, bombard target, target heals back... ok, you get the picture
-I really like the "free unit for the first to research a tech" idea for the second-level religious techs and KotE and such. I do NOT like it for the T4 unit-enabling techs. For T4 units, you almost always want to upgrade your most highly promoted T3 units instead of building the T4 unit from scratch. Thus, a free level 1 Beastmaster is just a unit I have to delete so that I can upgrade all four of my high-level Rangers.
It was strangely satisfying to delete an archmage, but yes you have a good point... why? Well, I guess the AI will keep them around which means they'll actually have at least one, assuming the goblins leave them alone long enough to get some cottages out anyway
Yes you are correct, its a beoitch to deal with the archers, especially if they campout on a highly defensible position. But there are ways to work around and directly with the threat.
The great thing about new WM or FfH players is that they're like the AI, if they're having trouble just imagine how the AI is affected.
The goblin archers are frustrating because they do force you to deal with them. Not because they are a threat, because they remove your ability to play the game until you deal with them. They appear very early and they can completely shut down your 'empire' if you get unlucky with their spawns. I'd rather be overrun with wolf riders, at least it's quick
There must be other ways, however. I will try the tactic you described. By using the, now functional, "Barbarians and Animals will only spawn in fog of war"-option, you can keep regions clear. This seems like a cheat, though, since its only an option, and not implemented into the game directly. On a similar note, I have no idea how people can want to play with the "Raging Barbarians" option!
Here's a simple strategy
Beeline archery.
One archer and one warrior is far more powerful than three warriors, archers are vastly superior city defenders and can easily defend your borders well past the time when barbarian axeman show up if placed properly.
The 'option' to have them only spawn in the FoW is actually just returning them to the way barbarians worked in BtS and FfH. It was Fall Further that first allowed them to spawn in visible tiles as a mechanic to make them tougher to deal with. The masochists among us like that, but really the game option should eb to allow them to spawn outside the FoW, not the other way around. People are more comfortable leaving an option that makes the game harder off than they are enabling an option that makes the game easier, you know virtual machisimo
