Russian version - first impressions

[Shd]

Originally Posted by Elwin

They have alreasy released patch balancing dragon, no patch feature of AP is failure now :p

For such game "no patch feature" is impossible goal, AFAIK

That patch they released (17.04 russian patch notes) changed many other things too...

Most important changes (in my opinion) except bug fixes:

Dragon level cap moved to lvl 60. Decreased exp gaining for some dragon skills.
High magic gives 2/4/6 casts (instead of 1/2/3) with 1st cast mana consuming 10/15/20 (instead of 7/14/20).
+15% damage for every 7 int (instead of 10%)
for "magic shackles" spell mage/paladin get 2.0/1.4 multiplier when calculating enemy unit max leadership (there is leadership limit for this spell now).
Burning/poison is calculated depending on attacker/defender leadership.
Corrected evade skill in a way that unit cannot evade 2 attacks in row. (this was annoying when at 20% possibility there was like 5 evades in a row)

-Lizardmen are awesome! The +50% chance to act again after killing a stack can kick in quite often, there was a battle where I got to attack with them 4 times in one round!

Yesterday, when i played, most funny thing was when my summoned and enemy demons (each have 50% possibility to get another action point after being attacked even when their move is done) started to hit each other... It was like 5 hits for each in one turn

[Ryastar]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

-Guardsmen now have Smashing Blow and they also seem to have a % chance to Evade attacks, or they evade critical hits like Vampires do.

THAT EXPLAINS IT! One battle I was fighting had a stack of Guardsmen as the last enemy stack, and the stupid thing evaded six attacks in a row stretching across two rounds of combat. I eventually just gave up and killed them with a spell. That % chance must have kicked in (along with terrible luck on my part).

[BB Shockwave]

I must say, as much as I like Lizardmen, the 50% chance to act again is sometimes too powerfull. Once I got to act FIVE times in a row in the first round with them, basically killing all the enemies with one stack of 50 Lizardmen...

High magic gives 2/4/6 casts (instead of 1/2/3) with 1st cast mana consuming 10/15/20 (instead of 7/14/20).

Let me get this straight... so if you cast 2 spells in a round, the second will cost 10/15/20 more mana? Was it not so that Higher Magic will only work with low-level spells, IE that cost little mana as it is?

-Also, something I noticed - Good Morale now has a Heroes of Might&Magic like effect too! It shows just like in those games, a golden eagle-like animation appearing randomly over one of your troops at the beginning of each turn. Basically, the initiative and speed of that troop is increased for the duration of that turn. I wonder if bad morale has a similar but negative effect?

[Elwin]

NO you read wrong.Just higher magic works for spells which cost 10/15/20 mana

[Ryastar]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

-Also, something I noticed - Good Morale now has a Heroes of Might&Magic like effect too! It shows just like in those games, a golden eagle-like animation appearing randomly over one of your troops at the beginning of each turn. Basically, the initiative and speed of that troop is increased for the duration of that turn. I wonder if bad morale has a similar but negative effect?

No, that`s not the effect of morale. It`s actually one of the skills in the mind tree, the one that looks like two feet, it`s about halfway down the right side of the tree, directly above diplomacy. It took me a while to figure it out, but what it does is it increases the init and speed of one of your troops at the beginning of each round by 0/1 at level 1, 1/1 at level 2, and 2/2 at level three.

[Shd]

Originally Posted by BB Shockwave

Let me get this straight... so if you cast 2 spells in a round, the second will cost 10/15/20 more mana? Was it not so that Higher Magic will only work with low-level spells, IE that cost little mana as it is?

That means:

You can cast second spell in round (no matter how much mana it will comsume) if 1st spell casted in round consumes less or equal than 10/15/20 mana (1st/2nd/3rd High magic level).

And you can cast 2 spells per round in 2/4/6 rounds per battle

[MisterBarca]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Overall game is somewhat shorter. Maybe 30 hours of game time and 300 enemy stacks (depending on how thorough you are).

So there was false advertising, as the developer claimed that the expansion would be even longer than the original game.

[Zhuangzi]

Actually I recall them saying it would be 30% shorter than KB:TL. So I don't think it's a case of false advertising.

Just hurry up and release it. I'm waiting.

[Metroplex]

All good things come to those who wait... I guess the same applies to KB:AP

[DGDobrev]

The game itself is indeed shorter, with less battles, but it's much more challenging and much more fun to play - at least in my opinion.

Since I got the game on my company's trip to Moscow, I was able to play it through a few times with all chars. I did give some info in other thread, but this seems like a proper one to pour some stuff out...

The game, in my eyes, is once again made for a warrior. The warriors get a neat last-tier skill that allows them to retain rage to a percentage of their total rage, meaning you will always have some rage even if you don't fight for a while. If you use up all your rage, you will gradually get back to the minimum amount set by this skill for free Neat. The rest is pretty much like in KBTL - xp booster dragon skills, tactics, etc. In addition to that, the dragon is pretty powerful and with a proper dragon skill build-up you can use it on every turn, pretty much like a spell book - but of course, you get tons of rage per turn in combat, while you can't get that much mana per turn. It is very common to finish a battle with full rage and be ready for the next one straight away.

The mage is doing great, and the little tweaks to the Intellect attribute (like boosting spell power every point and such) make a nice change for the casting-oriented players. Now mass damaging spells like geyser and armageddon are well worth the buck, since with more intellect you can do some substantial damage (and not the fixed one in KBTL, where in time spells were easily outclassed by spirits' abilities in the endgame - in my opinion). Still, after each battle you will be pretty much hard pressed to wait a bit on the field to replenish your mana supply unless you managed to mana spring it back to full somehow, but not all battles allow for that - especially because there are armies without ranged or no-retaliation units. So... Emerald Green Dragons for the Mages once again, and heavy investment in the new Transmutation skill (up to 10 mana when an enemy units dies or up to 20 mana when an allied unit dies)

In my eyes, the Paladin once again gets the worst of the game. First of all, no resurrection scroll at start. It is replaced by peacefulness. Just great... Top that with the lack of good mana regen in combat - unless you try to get the best of all classes, which won't be easy, I promise you, especially because mana regen is a last-tier skill in the mage tree now. The paladin also gets the pretty much useless skill Resurrection which picks out a random stack of units that have died and resurrects some of them, in addition to boosting the similar spells of the Paladin itself and units that have it (Paladins, inquisitors and such).

However, there are a few good things about the paladin. Since he can go deeper in the mind tree, he can get a skill that adds 1 morale to Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Lizards and Demons, as well as the last-tier Voice of the Dragon skill, which boosts the morale of animals and dragons by 2 at max lvl. So, one can try playing a paladin as a Dragon master. Top the high morale (+20% attk/def, +30% crit chance) with Prayer (adds some chance to all your units to get a crit - up to 10% at lvl 3) and Adrenaline (random unit gets up to +2 initiative/speed) and you can get a good idea as to where the battle may be going. However, as a Warrior, I could get a high-morale army without a problem as well.
As in KBTL, the Paladin performs better as a warrior than as a mage, using buffs and boosting spells to support his army.

However, just as in KBTL, the question remains - is morale and its bonuses worthwhile? That's one for everyone to answer for him/herself, but in my eyes, it's not. It's all too well and good to act first, but against an overwhelming enemy it may not prove to be enough in some cases. Sadly, the spells and the dragon are the backbone of pretty much any victory - and the paladin can't manage any of them properly, or to their fullest extent.

He still makes for a quite challenging and fun game with lots of tough battles though. And he (whoops, she) is still my personal favorite

That's my input for now... When I finish hard with both 3 chars I may add more. I'll try to keep it with less spoilers.