Frogboy: response re your query about how people win the game

I think a lot of his improvements are put into the Challenging AI. Make sure you test the AI at that level as some of the things you noticed the AI failing at, it may be utilizing at that level. I might be out of date on this but the theory is that the AI will get smarter until it is at Challenging level, and then it will start cheating at the higher levels (bonus stats, production, etc).

Makes sense. It'll be a while before I get that far.  In part I wanted to see if this is the kind of feedback Brad wanted, even if it's at too low a level of difficulty to matter much.

The monsters don't have an AI to them. Only other players do.  

The AI gets smarter up until challenging. After Challenging it is given bonuses.

The monsters must have some kind of AI to them... After all they chase you sometimes...

Challenging difficulty (and anything under it)

Champions:

try to get at least two Champions (altough one can work, preferably if he can use some kind of magic, prefereably fire). One must be specialized as mage; the other one depends as having some kind of meless tank/dps is important but having him with some magical abilities can be very useful. So Path of the Mage for one and the other may be tank with Path of the Mage or Path of the Warrior.

Techs:

those that don't require an eternity. Focus on Civilization and Warfare. Magic only when cheap (Exploration and Shard Harvesting are staples, the rest I'm no in a hurry). Totally needed for my conquests: Standing Army, Training, Leatherworking, Logistics. In the Civilization tree: get everything at least until the Economics tier.

Cities:

Build almost everything (Production, growth, money, food, research). Unit production cities get all the barracks and similar stuff. At level up? Something that gives research (with full queue!), bonus to my troops (the accuracy one) or reduces maintenance. I don't do hard specialization of my cities anyways.

Units:

• Traits for my attack forces: Charge, Fast, Bloodthirsty.
• Weapon for my attack forces: Spear.
• Armour for my attack forces: None. Complete Leather Armour once unlocked.
• Size of each "group" of troops: Party, and Group as soon as it's unlocked.
• Mount? Not really needed except if I plan to reinforce far away frontlines and want fast moving troops.
• Special gear? None.

Archer type units (for city support) usually go with Charge (hey, +3 Init in first turn!!!) and Fast. "Defender" units my best armour, shield, some sword and traits that add defense/life.

Main army:

• 1 Sovereign (d'oh!)
• 1-3 Champions (1-2 mages, 0-1 tank/dps)
• 3-4 Groups of Spearmen (with Leather if possible)

Spells:

• Fire Dart is must have ASAP if I use Fire.
• Heal also must have if I use Life. 
• Growth is also quite nice to have although not being able to use it on troops anymore sucks. Not that my spearmen suck without it.
• Counterspell thingy would be useful if I ever had the chance to actually use it...
• Burning Hands if using Fire, need to save mana and the enemy is really close.

Battles:

• Usually rush the enemy with the spearmen and tank Champion while using single target range with the mages. Normal battles can go from 1 to 2 turns. Enemies with high HP and/or defense and/or big groups require more.
• Maulers? Let them approach until they are close enough so I can strike first and focus on them.  

Dense monsters, dense magic, fast technology

Normal difficulty

Wander around and pick up heroes. Search for any and all shards and build cities to take advantage of them. Ignore opponents unless they have shards in their sphere. Level up heroes, kill monsters, level up heroes, kill monsters, rinse/repeat. Clear out wildlands and send in pioneers. Build up massive stacks of hero doom and then wipe out my opponents.

Tech is basically useless for the most part. After getting mining and channeling, I mostly just ignore it. Maybe I'll get the tech to recruit better heroes if they are laying around. But, the recruited heroes at higher tech levels are almost always much lower level than the heroes I'm running around with by the time I have the tech to recruit them, so it doesn't much matter.

In combat, it's usually just running up to the bad guys with melee heroes and beating them to death. If there's a big group gathered together, then my super-fast fire sovereign will fireball them to death.

Challenging:

Found a city.

Murder any beasties nearby by means of magic and mayhem. Grab any heroes. Sell any useless loot and rush build stuff in the city. Build up Leather armor and spears, make a few defensive forces.

Tech-wise: Standing army, leatherworkings, some basic civ techs, and then we expand further. And Shard Harvesting.

Once the countryside is semi-safe, poineers are dropped to take important resources with outpost. The sovereign goes off and try to find a second spot to build a city. If she does, a city gets constructed. Upgrade to 5-man armies ASAP, get Bows ASAP. Bloodthirsty and Accuracy do the trick. +1 Army size.Make two more cities, exterminate the countryside a bit futher, if no kingdoms have come forth to uhm, share their lands, scout their lands, pick one and start a fight. Take over their cities. Wait till population reaches a decent level, pick a fight with the next kingdom. Exterminate, wait till population reaches a decent level, pick a fight with everyone else there is left. I always make sure I am about bankrupt... if I have cash,  I spend it, aggressively.

Army-wise: Caster hero, 4-5 archers, 2 melee units (more archers if more room). Soon as chainmail has been discovered we deck out our archers in chainmail. Or platemail. Dont bother with leather.Heros primarily take traits that benefit the whole army like +1 iniative or healer, and caster traits.

Soon as I hit the 4-city stage, its effectively game over.... all I have to do is order my armies to wipe them out, all of them. If I cannot conquer areas, I will send specialists to raze the countryside ( 6-move scouts with shortbows do the trick....fast moving, hard to catch and very, very frustrating to fight...).

I prefer 3-move archers... move 2 spaces back, fire arrows. Rinse and repeat and make the enemy pay for every square they have to move.

Of course, specialist forces apply where needed. +Strength warriors with 2-handed axes, speedy spear-armed horsemen, horsearchers, it all depends on the oppostion.

Challenging and Under:

Offense: Use custom soveriegn with might, fire magic, brilliance, and the starter bow. Cast flaming weapon on him and destroy everything around the area picking up new champions whenever possible (up to 6).

Defenders(Early): Fast, Iron Skin Spearmen to escort settlers/defend new cities.

Tech(Early): First 5-6 starter techs, typically with civics first, ignoring shards if there are no nearby fire nodes.

Cities: Build as close together as possible maximizing grain yield. Always build Gallows, Bakery, and 'usually' palace, sometimes prison or oracle if they present themselves. Snake towards mana nodes because the game requires it for one of the most powerful buildings =(

Economy(Early): Drop tax rate to zero, sell stupidly redicously ludicrously overpriced gear to buy more heroes and support buildings

Tech(Late): All food boosting techs, leather, bows, jewelry

Defenders(Late): Fast, Charge, Accuracy Archers with rings of cold and fire, and leather pants/armor. Iron Skin, Defender, Strength Sword and boarders with all upgradable gear. Fast, Charge, Strength Spearmen with Upgradable gear.

Economy(Late): Tip tax up to normal (with buildings typically this is 0%-10% unrest).

This is pretty much as late as the game has gotten before I decided to purposely sit on my ass to tech/quest.

You realize you could actually move them all 3 >.>

The question then becomes, how do you neutralize such a strategy, and if you can't, how do you nerf it?

I can see Cavalry being a counter to it, but Cavalry comes after archers usually.

You don't need cavalry to counter archers, you just need charging spearmen. When he is using 6 move archers - then you need horses, but I presume he is obtaining 6 moves via horses also. Unless he is abusing stacking compasses.. I have to try that.

Also he is talking about using chainmail and platemail.. If the enemy also has chainmail.. 8 damage shortbows aren't going to do anything. On that note.. perhaps there should be a 20 turn time limit to combat. To prevent continually firing on an enemy for 1 damage out of range, until it dies.

Ive had  occasions where a full move cancelled their shot. Might be a bug

Loved your post 1+ for taking the time to share.

Usually I have longbows at that point, and am looking into Yew longbows for pierce. As for not doing damage with shortbows: level 10 archers do 10 damage per hit against ashwake dragons who have what, 30 armor... they just dont live long enough to kill off the 300 HP dragon. Well... they got him down to 22 HP, and then I recalled my Sovereign and went in with stack nr two to kill off the now extremely wounded dragon ( who still managed to eat another archer unit). Do not understimate "8 damage piercing shortbows X 5 or X 7"... thats still 40-56 damage right there. They are lethal when concentrated on a single unit.

There isnt much of an effective counter against an army of archers that move quick and radiate in turn 1 to maximize inter-archer distance and prevent AoE other than heavily armored and quick horsemen. more archers of your own or magic. Or shielded foot-troops, as those take less damage from archers. But there is a reason why ranged units are good... they are ranged.When coupled with two capable melee units and a caster doing heavy damage they become an outright nightmare to fight, the best way to deal with them is not at all ( pull into your territory, cast Pillar of Flame and then trounce on the remains with superior forces, or send in some dragons I guess). The problem is that the caster can deal with stuff that has heavy armor, and the archers can pummel anything without armor with ease.

Movement:I have not stacked compasses. Move 6... horse, two movenent traits and a compass do the trick. Compasses should only work on the map, not in tactical.

edit: Currently standing on the edge of Lord Relias his terrain: Also known as "more pew pew". Come tonight they will invade his lands, backed up by my sovereignand plate armored foot soldiers.

edit2: Ill see about posting my savegame later tonight, currently my 15 month old daughter is clearing out the cabinets in my study whilst I type, so ill be busy cleaning that up

So does anything that says "movement" count on both maps?  I seem to remember some movement-based equipment not adding movement on the strategic map.

I begin aggressively.

My hero recruits heroes as much as possible (usually the two nearest) ; then I build one or two military units.

My group then goes outside and fights as much as possible. I may lose one or two units, and I replace them as required.

At some point, the three heores have found enough equipment and gained enough experience to become able to handle fights on their own. From that point on, my group of heroes continues to explore, while my city(ies) develop.

After a while, I look to having a group of 5 or 6 horoes, all of them level 14+ ; this is enough to go on a rampage against any opponent. The opposition cannot build troops sufficiently advanced to survive. The group is usually rated Deadly or Epic, and can tackle any wandering monster groups ; this is actually what the heroes group does : continuously improve experience by fighting. Furthermore, this tactic makes it possible to gain very good equipment much faster than having to wait for it to be available through reasearch ; this improves the deadlyness of that tactics.

Actually, cities seem to serve no purpose and buildings have no actual use except improve research. However, since spell knowledge is not even tied to actual reasearch, I do not even care about my cities, which could fall to enemy troops without really preventing me from ultimately winning the game with but one unstoppable army.

I've been playing at the default level. Conquered the world around 350 turns, taking my time and wandering a lot.

This tactic was quite good in War of Magic ; nothing seems to have changed in Fallen Enchantress.

Yves

I think things will change when the rest of the game is balanced with heroes. Right now they can get epic equipment and level very fast. Goodie huts are giving us our best loot and there is no real cost as long as we have enough move points to avoid creatures. There is not a significant threat to cities, so we can afford to go questing across the whole realm and leave them undefended. forcing the player to camp out near his city would make expansion a part of our strategic thinking. Making it challenging to defend a city would bring XP to defenders, making it harder to just waltz through cities on a rampage. 

The features to make it better are there, they just need fleshing out. 

Abuse heroes (high power, high movement speed, no upkeep, begins gaining strength immediately, allows you to focus all research and city production on growth)

Abuse razing (one turn destruction of cities that take dozens/hundreds of turns to build up)

Abuse 'city teleportation' via snaking (build one improvement at a time, build the next improvement touching that one, can stretch a city out to 15 tiles or more)

Spells: Early game cheap useful buffs/debuffs  like Haste, Slow, Obscuring Fog, Berserk, Growth, Shrink, Stinking Mud, Graveseal, etc.

Mid/late game, Fireball, Blizzard or the completely broken Cloud Walk are all lethal.

Strategic buff spells like Evade and Stoneskin are skipped unless I get a surplus of one specific shard.

Past that, the majority of late game spells can end the game if you have sufficient mana (Tornado/Earthquake, etc).

I rarely bother with the super high cost one shot effect spells.

So far that works on Hard, any size map.

Units aren't actually terrible or useless, they just require more time to get rolling, and I find that unless I got a really bad hero draw, by the time I can start powering up units, my hero stack is already unstoppable.

Hmm.  I'm not sure "razing" counts as something that can be "abused" -- other 4x have razing, too, so it appears to be part of the genre (albeit not necessarily universal).  Also, I happen to like city teleportation -- maybe for those people who consider cities "useless" that might make them useful again?

On Hard difficulty, with normal everything else:

• Pick a champion with strong combat/adventuring abilities such as Relias or Irane, preferrably with Air so you can get cloudwalk. Send them out imediately to start levelling up and finding armor.
• Find a path of the mage champion (With air access, if you didn't before).
• Recruit as many other champions as possible.
• Combat champions should focus on init, strength, dodge wherever possible. Go defender so you can get counter attack.
• Mage champions init, evoker, affinity, improved spell levels (limited to 1 or two spheres), spellpower, intelligence, dodge, strength in that order.
• When possible, split champions up to increase enemies defeated/turn for more experience/turn overall.
• Research basic techs, as mentioned in previous posts. Go for mounts before leather-working. Wargs before tier 2 armor/weapons
• Once basic techs are researched, give +1 mana on each city.
• Expand aggressively, getting every shard that you can, make sure you find some horses and some wargs. Gold is okay, but not really needed.

Eventually an opponent will declare war on you. This is because you will have the lowest "score" and be seen as the weakest. He will do this even though his troops are spread out and he's entirely unready for battle. Your champions are invincible (albeit, it may require some reloading to make this possible). Crush the opponent who declared war on you with your champions. For some reason he will have a higher score than you until his final city falls. Others might try to declare war on you at this time, give them the money they demand that you don't have. Once you've defeated your opponent, declare war on someone else and kill them with 2-6 champions. Repeat. After you control 3 kingdoms you should be about the same "score" as your opponents. They will stop declaring war on you at this point. Win via means of your choice at your leisure.

I typically play on ridiculous difficulty, large map, 7 AI opponents, dense monsters, dense magic, normal tech.

Strategy?  There is none.  Wander around with my sovereign, picking my battles until he becomes unstoppable, at which point I just stomp on things.  I like a sovereign with either water magic for mantle of oceans (free casting for path of the mage + affinity + mantle) or discipline for melee hits that one shot even ridiculous monsters.  On anything less than ridiculous world difficulty, the stomping starts wayyyy too early - this delays it enough to make the game enjoyable for a couple hundred turns.

I don't worry about cities - an AI will take over your capital at some point unless all your neighbours have been taken out by bears (usually 2-3 AI's will drop in the first 50 turns.  Bear cubs are ferocious!).  They just build a bunch of buildings for you you can't get anyway, so it's an even better city when you take it over again.

How many turns do your games typically take?

How long does it take the monsters to double-kill all the sovereigns? 

Honestly, I'm having trouble playing any game that I meet, let alone fight anyone.

Well, since I haven't been able to finish a game, no more than 500 or so. 

One thing you need to do is to have the Ai kill the monsters in their territory.  I level-up my champions by doing a non-aggression pact with one, then go and clean house around their cities, plus I don't lose any more caravans.  Their sovs/champions are woefully under-powered by the time I clean up all around.  And, as a matter of fact, the AI needs to recruit the stronger, later game heroes, I can get them in their territories, too.

1. Found city on best grain/gold within a couple turns march
2. Start clearing local area of monsters and quests, give a wide berth to high level monsters
3. As soon as you find your second hero and have leveled a bit, seek out an opponent of opposite faction
4. Depending on how long it took you to find your first opponent, he/she should only have 1-3 cities, if at all possible take out his capital
5. If you take out the capital, game over, if it was too strong take out the settlements and build units until you can take out his main.
6. Game over.  Have fun messing around with PvE and city building until you get bored and take out other factions or they get themselves killed.

As far as troop building, archers are pretty nice, but I usually go with glass cannon axemen, cheap, easy to get, and very effective.