2) Krakens are able to get goofy promotions like Woodsman I. Also, when you get a second (and third, etc) Speaker, the first Speaker (who's already cast Summon Kraken) is able to cast it again. You still can only have as many Krakens as you have Speakers, but with the current method you're able to cast Summon Kraken each time using the Speaker with the highest number of stars (i.e., the summoned Krakens have the most Empowerment).
i think this is due to not being able to track which unit summoned which unit (which is the same reason summons and fireballs don't give exp to their casters, or atleast part of it).
3) Balance issue: the Four Horsemen are too weak. Always have been. By the time they show up, there's plenty of firepower available to deal with them. Rather than jacking their strength up to 80 or something, perhaps a more effective method would be to give them an accompanying stack of units. The offending player should lose at least a city or two to each of these guys.
usually they're weak yes, but i've seen different. Expecially when playing the sheiam summoning the infernals with the "double AC" on, i've seen them arrive right when i finished priesthood. They could still use a horde of sect of flies/ diseased corpses/ pyre zombies/ skeletons / whatever to back them up. This would prevent them from capturing one city and defending it till the end of times aswell.
4) The first Horseman arrived at AC 60. The last three all arrived at once, right around AC 70. Intentional that they're not spaced out more?
as far as i know it's 60 - 65 - 68 - 70 or something like that. Still pretty close together, but there should be a few turns between each appearance unless something drastic happens (razing the order holy city, killing basium or something like that)
5) Balance issue: Cultist's Tsunami spell is overpowered. What might help is not giving Frigates / Man of Wars any cargo capacity. Or, make Tsunami a 6th-level promotion or somesuch. Or, make the spell damage units even in the caster's square. Right now, I can build a stack of Man of Wars each carrying a newbie Cultist, and can pretty much rampage around the map.
6) Several times (always?), the AI's hero has this unique ability to be the absolute last defender in a city, regardless as to the relative strengths. As I have always understood it, the current defensive strength of a unit determines whether it will be the unit that defends when a city / stack is attacked. On a related note, I've had cities with 30 units in them, and the units that get killed are guys in the middle (defensively speaking) of the stack. My badass hero with 20 defense and all sorts of promotions never gets touched. And no, this isn't related to Assassins and such -- the attacking units are normal types. Specifically, I've seen this happen when the attacking units are Rathas, but I'm sure I've seen it with other attacking units, too.
About the hero's: just like channeling, the hero promotion reduces the chance of being picked first to defend in a stack. This is to prevent someone from killing off your hero with 2% chance units or something like that.
7) Speaking of Rathas... something seems amiss with their combat ability. They don't look all that strong, but they rarely lose when attacking my units. I've regularly lose lvl-4 longbowmen (in a city) to these guys.
i'm not sure, but i think they've eighter got a bonus against archery or against recon units, which could explain their relative high power.
8) On several games I've played now (in fact, ALL of the 0.31 games I've played), there is terrific slowdown towards the end of the game. I think I know what's causing it. The AI players -- maybe not all of them, but certainly the score leader and several others -- has a tendency to build a lot of units. Like, hundreds of units. He then moves them around, of course, which is probably what is bringing the game to a halt. In my current game, the score leader has over 200 Thanes of Kilmorph in one city on my border (and his religion is Order; go figure). Basium has 139 Angels in his capital (my fault; I keep razing cities). It's quite common to see stacks of 50-plus units (longbowmen, etc) in a city. While very effective in a number of ways (the score counter loves it when you have tons of units, and it of course makes a city pretty much uncapturable, as well as allows you to pretty much destroy anything you like), a big question is, how is the AI affording this? I play on Monarch or Emperor, and I'm guessing that the unit-maintenance cost for the AI has been ridiculously reduced or removed.
Foul
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