Thanks!
By the way, which version are you playing? V2013-03-18?
--Yes,that's the version I downloaded.
Well, one of the issues that I had with the original game was that the spirit abilities were too low in power. So I bumped up their abilities so that you have a good rise in their damage, but I did it so that it was in line with what you might be doing damage-wise with your units and spells at that point in the game.
I also did my best to make each spirit ability useful. I think you'll find that they are all pretty useful now. The toughest one to make useful was Poison Cloud, but I think I got it such that you can do some serious damage with it if you decide to level it up.
-- I played with warrior. The poison cloud is a good change and works nice,but the shoal is overpowered,one shoal and half the enemy army is gone and that on 300% ,I imagine on 170% it'll be a disaster
. Another overpowered ability is the wall ,with so many health and the ability to cast it every turn,I block everything too easy.
Can you do me a favor and post a screenie of your hero screen at a certain point (or points) in the game so that I can get a feel for what your army lineup was, etc.? Maybe you can also tell me which spells you were using a lot, general strategies, etc.
--Hmm ,spells with warrior are limited,maybe haste and fear come first.But I didn't needed them so much. At some point I found the spell: sacrifice , and I noticed that you reduced the gained percentage. In my opinion that spell is really hard to use anyway and now you made it useless.In "Grandmaster" the mana for the spell is increased and that balances it good I think.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that - can you go into more detail as to how it was too easy and boring?
--Easy answer
- too powerful spirits. Maybe it's just for the warrior because he develops them faster. The hero also starts with too many rage points and also raises them very quick,I was offered 13 rage points on a level ,which is too much.Having 73 rage points on lvl7 is again too much.And another important thing is,that in my opinion you messed with the speed of the creatures too much. On impossible every enemy creature has +1 speed in the beginning(later maybe more) and in some heroes armies again +1 speed and that makes them impossible to stop. So either I kill them on the first round with overpowered shoal or they kill me in the second. There is just no way to distract them,to use different tactics,to slow them, to make a change to your army and strategy. That is all gone, everything lasts 2 max 3 turns and that's it.
For example, do you skip battles and save fights for later so that you can get easy victories for tallying victory counters for items. Or do you clear an area as you get to it. Do you go into each battle with full rage, etc.
--Yes ,I do skip battles. But that is just my decision, I like the things that way. "Grandmaster" comes to my mind again. I play it on 400% (that's the percentage put by the developer of the mod on impossible) and that makes you think really hard,what to kill now,what to kill later,you must think even that later you should also leave some weak armies to kill them just to raise your rage and for some other reasons
. It involves much thinking throughout the whole game and on the map also,not just in battle, you must carefully plan what you can do,otherwise you are left with no army and no money and must restart. I tried it 2 times and twice I was stopped by general Karador, but it was very interesting,so now I am trying for the third time
. Ofcourse lesser difficulties don't need to be this hard, but you can always control that by the meat percentage - just a suggestion. And the increasing stats are a good control thing too,just the speed is a bad thing.
You should try "Grandmaster" even on a lesser difficulty , I think it'll help you balance your mod. Sadly it's on russian only I think. Maybe I can try to translate the change log if you are interested.
Well, I don't think the Turtle is supposed to be that hard and once you survive its area of effect attack without taking losses you can pretty much finish it off no matter how many hitpoints it has (well at least until you run out of mana). Did you experience the rage / mana gain decreasing effects, yet as the combat goes longer?
--Actually the bosses should be really hard on impossible, in the russian mod the turtle is with 20 000 hit points, it is really hard,but it is doable if you find the right army,strategy and etc. I'm sorry to give you always this mod as an example ,but for me it's the best balanced mod I've seen. If it annoys you, I'll stop
. About the rage and mana reduction , I did experienced it,but the battles are so quick,that it happened just once or twice.
Have you tried any item suppression fights, yet? You should note that they are more challenging.
--Suppression not, just the druid thingie and Rina's ring ,but they were too easy,one shoal and 3 towers are gone
Can you do me a favor and keep playing? I'd like to hear if it gets difficult at any stage for you.
--Maybe I'll continue in 2 weeks or so. I'll post more impressions if I do.
Did you try to fight any heroes too early in the game and lose to them? There are plenty of heroes that should be really challenging early in the game, so I'm guessing you bypassed them until you were higher level. For example, the Ghost in Verlon Forest is usually too hard until you are about her level. I find that most heroes are hard to dispatch when you are a lower level than they are.
--yes I do wait until I get strong enough to fight some of the heroes,but that I had explained above,that applies for 300% and upwards , for 170% I suppose I don't have to wait. But in the beginning the player doesn't have enough options with the army,spells,spirits and such ,the diversity is limited,so it is natural to skip the hard fights at least for the time when you get a decent hero level. Later when you have more options for strategy,you can fight with higher level heroes without skipping them.
For me, personally, I find the game challenging during the hero battles throughout on impossible, but when I play I fight as few battles as possible until I get Rina and then I fight 40 battles to get her children and then switch to Feanora and do the same, switching every 40 battles to a new wife so that I can ensure that the children work properly as I debug-play my mod. So I get a bit of a reset on the bonuses every 40 battles (although I'll put items in those slots if I got them) and I tend to not sell spells until I get my Trade up to level 3 so that I can maximize my cash earnings since I end up spending the money on Crystals and Runes later.
-- I didn't sell any spells also,but that's because I had more than enough gold anyway,even on 0.4 . Maybe the king's rewards for having a child are too high. In "GM"(Grandmaster) I do have to sell things,because I never go for kids. It is good that you increased the runes for "Trader" skill, but later I think that the player will accumulate too much gold selling those scrolls.
By the way, do you use the units that you get bonuses from with each wife / their children or do you just use your favorite units available?
--I was with Feanora and I did used royal snakes,but anyway without royal snakes in the beginning of The Legend is very hard. For the turtle I also got Bears and ancient bears,because the kids provided bonuses for them and I think the bears were too powerful with bonuses from the wife combined with 2 kids, they had max morale and amazing stats,doing around 1500 dmg to the Turtle in a single hit.
Questions, questions, but the more information you can provide the more useful it will be for me if I make changes in the future or I can use this information to help me with my AP / CW version of the mod.
Thanks again for you great comments and please keep them coming as that's really the only way I can improve this mod!
--I thank you. It is really much work and time you've spend on this mod. I'll try to help with more info, whenever I can.
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