Some first impressions on the game. I played three games as D'Tesh, Amurites and Khazads.
First, in general, I like this new version.
D'Tesh and probably other fallow civs are quite advantaged by the new health system. This game, playing Thanatos, was the easiest ever. At turn 154, playing as Monarch, I had *destroyed* all the others civs and had 130 slaves waiting!! At my very first lair exploration, I was lucky enough by find a fight between dwarves and lizardmen and I supported the later. Having some invisible units of strenght 5 at turn 6 eases things dramatically! But in general, I think D'Tesh are too powerful, despite their limitation in city size. Other civs had city largely below 10 while my 4 cities were all above 20. Maybe growing a city should be more difficult. After size 10, it could require 1 slave to reach 11, 2 to reach 12, 3 for 13, etc.... Or require the sacrifice of 2 slaves to gain 1 pop. Maybe also the D'Tesh improvment line are too poowerful. Probably should reduce the bonus of crypts and pyres.
Animal blood are great. Except boar blood. Recons should not be allowed to do pillaging at all (and of course not autopillaging). And with Thanatos, letting an invisible unit autopillage is just insane with the prevent cost of improvements.
For the Amurites, I followed FoL, and I must say that this religion, which was great, is now a real pain. The new ancient forests give extra trade, but they reduce your food
and forbid to build lumbermills
. With the importance of food with the new health system, I had to chop down most of them. Guardian of Nature gives you health and happiness, but you will starve healthy (and happy!). Maybe the extra food was too powerful, but food reduction makes FoL completely unapealling
Khazads are greats as always. I played with the new Khazad mod by Beardy Dan, that I liked, despite some instability problems. But maybe they are too powerful, even without the module. With the new improvment technique (and the impossibility to build quarries without resource), RoK is clearly the most powerful religion. Problems to solve are 1/ food, but no religion can help you (and FoL can handicap you!) 2/ production. If you have hills, just build mines, and on flat lands, if you have forest, build lumbermills, but otherwise, the only choice is dwarven mines as workshops, with their food reduction, are useless. Maybe this should be adressed in terms of balance, otherwise civs that cannot follow RoK and have some soldiers of Kilmorphs will be quite penalized. Maybe remove the food malus from workshops?
Concerning the improvments build time, it is too long. You must have armies of workers to have a decent time (and to avoid the game to be boring), and the AI does not use this strategy. AI does not understand that having 10 workers working on the same improvment is by far better either economically or to protect them, than have having 10 workers each on a different task. More the extra production time makes the choices more strategic and IMO it helps the human player. Maybe multiplayers games are more interesting, but the AI behaves quite poorly in term of development presently. I think the time should be reduced, maybe by 2...
Some general remarks, not really specific to this version.
Arcane trait is underpowerded. The mage time reduction is useless with the catacomb libralus, and potency is not so useful. Maybe the arcane trait should also boost arcane lore production and potency should give magic resistance or reduce spell resistance of the target.
Converning combat, when your target withdrawls you get 1 point experience. But with a powerful unit and a weak target, it can be more than the gain for a victory!! Should be fixed. Maybe you should gain for a withdrawal min(1, gain for a victory)...
Otherwise, thanks for all and continue this great work.
, and this doesn't factor in the additional 1350(!)
