Thanks and Feedback
After playing MNAI and EMM for ages, I thought I should give some long overdue feedback.
Firstly a well deserved vote of thanks to the many people who developed and maintain FFH, MNAI, EitB and EMM. Having played all of these EMM is the one I have played the most; playing each civ in a round of games, currently up to round 9, so around 180 games so far (actually many more as this doesn’t include the many games I lost). Apart from the fact that I should probably get out more, what is amazing is that each game plays out differently and is a fresh challenge, a real credit to the various development teams along the way.
Some feedback follows, just my observations really based on these games, covering stronger/weaker civ balance and religions. (For the record, the settings for most of these games were: Immortal difficulty, Normal speed, Tectonics map, Wildlands, No huts, Advanced Tactics).
For the civs, mostly your start and how the early/mid game plays out make much more of a difference than which civ you are, but I find Lanun, Doviello (particularly with Mahala) and Luchuirp have a distinct edge over the other civs. Lanun with their drop-in power tiles are obviously very strong, and Doviello/Mahala has a very strong early(ish) rush with cheap on the fly upgrades financed by Raiders. Luchuirp have a similar good early window as it’s usually quite quick to get Barnaxus to Combat V, after which wood golems are cheap and strong.
At the other end of things, the Malakim really don’t have much going for them and are usually towards the bottom of the pack, but by far the worst (apart from the Kurios) are (perhaps surprisingly) the Calabim, whose lack of the humble Elder Council makes them just so slow to get going, even worse than Barbarian leaders. This is made worse by the Calabim leader traits, which I find don't work well with the Calabim Civ traits. I’m not sure what the scope is for further changes to EMM, but a Calabim leader with say Sage and Financial might help them get going a bit faster.
This is pretty minor, but of more significance I think is that the religions could do with a bit of rebalancing. The problems are with Empyrean and Esus - in practice these are virtually never used, not even by the AI. This is a shame, as they should be interesting options. The problem is they are weaker than the earlier religions, and as they come later (and cost over twice as much) by the time you might choose to switch to them you probably already have a religion established and the benefits are too limited or too slow to arrive to justify the cost of switching.
Empyrian is all about Chalid, but in EMM he is a shadow of his former self. Pillar of Fire is great, but comes far too late and the game is usually over long before it arrives. Crown Of Brilliance is nerfed by having a duration - more often than not Chalid casts it at the start of his turn, before movement, and ends up incinerating a passing rabbit rather than the enemy. If it is in scope (and I understand it may not be) I would suggest some changes: move Pillar of Fire to a more reasonable Arcane Lore, increase the chance of Crown Of Brilliance wearing off to 100%, and give the Vicar something useful to do in addition to Revelation, which is hardly ever needed - Inspiration perhaps. This would make Chalid a strong late game option again, but he has to be strong otherwise there’s no point switching to Empyrean.
Esus is similar in that by the time you think about getting it there are much better uses for gold than spreading the religion or casting expensive spells. Gibbon is a nice hero, but that’s about all you get for a long time, so unless I’m missing something there seems to be no point spending money to abandon the benefits of say Octopus Overlords or Fellowship of Leaves that you likely already have just for Gibbon and the ability to build some additional late game national units. To make Esus useful what’s needed perhaps is make it very cheap to spread (as it was in MNAI if I remember correctly) and make the Esus Level 1 spells free to cast and the higher level spells much cheaper, but I guess this sort of change would be out of scope now though.
These are pretty minor gripes compared to the epic scope and the many positive changes I find in EMM. I particularly like the extra animal types, which makes the Grand Menagerie actually achievable, and the extra Mana types, and the fact that some AI Civs can get seriously powerful by devouring 2 or 3 other Civs, which can make the late game a real challenge. Fighting the Sheam with their everlasting pit beasts and strength 7 spectres or the Clan with stacks of 100s of axemen is no joke, or attacking a Civ which quickly doubles their power by building the Mercurian Gate. Similarly starting next to the Illians and surviving (sometimes) a long, attritional war against the Priests of Winter is not easy, but very satisfying if you manage to do it.
Once again, thanks to all involved for creating such an absorbing experience. Right, back to round 9…
