Just wanted to log in to say that I really like it, and that Fantasy wars is a fun and challenging game. :D

the undead would be nice for an add-on. 8)

To Bad Mad

Thank you very much. It's pleasant to hear such words. Happy to work for you.

Played through 6 missions on human campaing, nice game but weird unit balance.
Knights and heroes are godly top tier, heavy armor and charge means walking through poor orcs. Heroes tank a bit worse but seem to be able to die with no penalty except main hero.
Ballista ranks second, especially after a couple levels with upgrades to 4 speed and 4 range meaning ability to tag anything 8 squares away with huge damage. Piercing armor also helps, not only that but it tanks better than archers too, likely wont survive cavalry charge but is fine after 3-4 hits from archers.
Then rangers are pretty average damage and tanking, but have lots of nice bonuses, no retaliation, +4 in forest, fast with 5 speed and no water penalty (with proper levelups of course), harass status effect, fear effect. Great to take some unimportant 20coin village, tag orcs garisoning it for 3-4 damage, repeat 2-3 times till they run away, go in and run to next village, not so great in big fights.
Then there's archers, which are inferior to ballista in every way though i guess I'd keep a couple in army because there seem to be 3-4 orc bombers on every map. Yes, they can cower other units on computer turn but with that low damage it doesn't make much difference. Only 2 range and low tanking means fast death, good thing computer AI goes gentle on them, usually doesnt target them if you dont leave them alone out in the open.
Infantry, ugh, pikemen/yeomen are like weaker and slower rangers and retaliation means they become unusable after 2-3 fights, halberdiers seem to be meant against cavalry but 3 speed! Swordsmen are just plain lousy and orc infantry doesnt seem too impressive either.
Air units, both human and orc, just horrible. Description says to finish weakened units but they're bad even at that :) I'd take a real unit in that slot. Maybe elven faction's dragons are good.

AI could be better too, plays much too defensive, for example almost always garisons towns even when its not benefitial for it, makes some bad mistakes like stepping into river sometimes, but at least seems better than most games.

Another weird thing, between fights all units get restored to full for free. Wounded I can understand, but I'd expect to pay for new recruits.

Hehe, I see that it all down to personal style... Halberdiers ROCK. Give them some river-walking artifact or few bonuses and they cut through horses (shielding from cavalry by negate charge, seriously, I don't know why swordsmen are able where one can get Halberdiers ;)), and upgraded Archers can cause auto-suicide-attack of an AI, when one have archer and flyer protecting attacked unit.
Cavalry is nice, but situational, I'm fond of light cavalry though :)

It all depends on Your style mate I say :wink:

But it must be said - AI is way overprotective, and sometimes my soft units can survive thanks to that. Some agressiveness bonus please for the patch :D

EDIT
I guess that between fights You'll get enough volunteers to join famous and succesfull mercenary company... So even no exp loss is not troubling me, 'cause newbies can train with veterans between battles and "catch up".
Anyway, I simply like this game :lol: :P

Well, I guess it depeds on one's tactics. 90% of my army consisted of rangers and archers. I didn't use infantry at all. Put rnagers on the hill or forest, back up by archers - very often enemy unit will be killed at once while attacking. As for Ballistas - actually an ugraded archer unit kills a ballista with one attack easily.

Thoughts on the Game:

I love the game. I loved the panzer general series, having played pg1, pg2, and people's general all the way through the entire campaign, often more than once. I'ved also played ag and fg, though not the entire way through. I do love wargames of all different sorts though, having played through most of the close combat series to completion. I also played king's bounty back in the day (though never got into the later homm). So fantasy wars really fit into a fantasy wargaming niche for me. That being said, I'm a fairly broad gamer, having put in a year altogether in 3 different mmorpgs, playing in clan fps competitively (paradigm shift hehe, we own battlefield, I'm retired now though), as well as enjoying rts and games like moo...so quite a variety lol.

I've played through the entire Orc Campaign on hard (getting mostly golds, a few silvers, and 2 bronzes)...Yes it took some time to figure out what units worked, more on this later.

I'm about halfway through the Human Campaign on hard.

Thoughts on Orc Units:

I was having problems dealing with hard as you need to maintain your experienced units. This often means having resilient (defense or escape ability) units else when half of your force is green for a new late campaign mission you are screwed or in save-reload city for every turn of the battle.

However, I found that Battle Orcs are a perfect mainstay unit. Get them shooting protection at lvl 1 and cavalry protection at lvl 2 and they are beasts. Trolls work too but they get shooting protection at lvl 5 and are vunerable to the slayer perk. Battle Orcs are cheap, so get tons of them up and running before encountering hordes of human cavalry later on.

I also found Goblin Bombardiers (forgot the name) are awesome. Great for softening up any unit. At lvl 2 they get shooting protection and can be used to kill archer units.

When you eventually get pteradon riders you also will want to use these.

So basically, an elite force of battle orcs, with 2xbombadiers, 2xpteradons, and of course elite heros carried the Orc Hard Campaign Day [Be sure to item stack your units, not your heros]. You don't really need archers, since you have your hexars and your airforce to take care of that stuff. You don't really need skirmishers since your air can scout. Your orcs move slow on weird terrain, but the main threat of the humans come from the cavalry, so it was usually worse for the human cavarly than it was for me to deal with a difficult terrian map...And Battle orcs' hard target ability makes skirmishers kind of bounce off.

Thoughts on the Human Campaign:

I'm still trying to find a nice mainstay core. However, he sky rider or eagles are awesome for the same reasons you want an orc airforce -- projection power, they can kill archers in pairs or kill units on rivers. It seems that humans favor cavalry, but I think it will require much more unit mixing than orcs because you still have to deal with taking cities and cavalry is poor for that.

Thoughts on the Game:

Great game. However, a few of the units could be tweaked. My perspective may be skewed since I started playing the game on hard and only really extensive studied orc units, but the costs/stats on some of the unit types needs to be tweaked...for example while skirmishers are great, they are too fragile imho when you just can just use air instead. Maybe bump them up to 15 strength for the foot skirmishers. Or perhaps this is an issue that detecting invis is too easy between all the abilities/artifacts/air scouting and distances involved. Also, light infantry did not seem to have that much of a role except to move faster through bad terrain, and as such it seemed a bit overpriced for only that ability (or perhaps keep the price the same but add many of the skirmisher abilies sans the skirmisher attack). I also particularly disliked the fact that activating some of the unit abilities (not spells) precluded an attack that turn...yet it would stay in effect till next turn allowing for an attack w/ the ability...it would be better if it lasted only one turn but allowed for an attack.

I'll also second what others have said about the AI. It could be better. I didn't notice anything exceptionally bad tactically, but it would play poorly strategically. I noticed that groups of enemies on the map would only activate once they saw my units, so maybe its something to do with this. This was exceptionally noticeable on hard as hard has like 30+ units you destroy in the later mission...and usually you did it with less than 5 losses of your own...that in itself probably says something could get better with the AI. But compared to other hex based war games, its not bad at all...but this could be related to the strategic activiation problem I mentioned above.

However, I especially enjoy the cutscenes, the plot, and the varied objectives. Compared to all of the above mentioned wargames, these definitely take the cake!

But in any case, can't wait till I get to the Allied Campaign!

Funny - I thought that Skirmishers are way too powerful. A level 5 skirmisher in good terran (forest, swamp) can kill pretty much anything. Also they are great for softening up targets. Couple attackes and the most powerful enemy unit is yours. All those fear and bad morale perks rule.

:lol: :lol:
See? Everyone has his own approach, boy what a game! :shock: :shock: :D :D I like skirmishers (rangers) very much as well 8)

So, when we're doing some skirmish? :wink:

P.S. I can already feel cold, abysmal lack of map editor, maps, campaigns... Guys, I know that King's Bounty is on it's way but Fantasy Wars is a really gooood game - more! More!

:lol:

My problem with skirmishers is that they just die so easily once detected to spells, ranged, air bombardment and concentrated attacks. Terrain helps, but their defense isn't that high compared to heavy infantry or cavalry types to begin with.

At least on hard, it's quite an effort to get any unit to lvl 5 unless it is very survivable, and I find if you use skirmishers to soften enemy they are often close enough that the enemy units can often accidentally see them, focus on them, and destroy them early on before lvl 5.

It's a similar problem with all 10 str units such as cavalry, heros and air units. However, cavalry are hard targets so they are harder to destroy, heros come back the next mission, and air units early on can be used away from frontline combat much more easily due to increased movement and ignoring land area control until they gain more experience. Also air units are harder to gang up on since fewer units can assault them.

That being said, maybe human rangers are much better than goblin equivalents. And even with goblin sneakers it was crazy fun to see an enemy unit get ambushed and decimated :)

Six it sounds like you where useing them as frontline troops.

You should be useing them to hit, then move behind your frontline and as such they dont get hit back.