1) Yes! Please make an option when choosing to auto-resolve a battle NOT to use magic. It sucks when you auto-resolve a battle that you are sure to win, and thus can't be bothered to play, but then your sovereign/champions burn half your mana supply!

2) Glad imbue is gone, but, as Alstein says, we need to make casting champions much rarer now, or at least class-based, so that rogues are rogues, warriors, warriors, and, well, you get the idea. Still like the idea of basic start-of-game heroes being more generic, with higher-level champions unique.

Hot-damn! Mages... LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!

Hi

This is the first time that I have commented on the game so apologies if my comments have already been covered or I've posted them in the wrong place.

1) Congratulations the game is begining to look really good.

2) Maps - Has the random map element been implemented as yet, as I have started in exactly the same place on several occasions (although the resourses have changed the map is identical) or does random only mean a choice between the pre-created maps. Also when I specify large map I don't always get one.

3) More maps - I love huge sprawling games, so any chance of a huge map size?

4) Even more maps - As the game progresses, on occasions I find that when I load a saved game everything loads except the resourses and the town graphics. Load again and they may or may not be there, doesn't seem to be any set pattern.

5) The notification of enemies in your territory is excellent, could we add neutrals to the notification. It's very annoying when you place an outpost or city to cut your opponents off from resourses that you haven't had chance to develop and a pioneer walks straight through your territory whilst your happily engaged elsewhere.

Finally would just like to say that I've commented for the first time because this is the first game in a long time that has the potential to be really great. Keep up the good work

It wasn't just availability, it was cost, I have major trouble keeping more than one army (and thus splitting the heroes out).

"Imbuement has been removed from the game.  I loved the flavor of it, but players didnt realize they could be casting spells with their champions.  And it makes the champions less unique if the thing that distinguishes them most (their access to spells) is missed.  It was a bit of complexity that could be dropped without losing any good gameplay.  Most notably since all the champions can cast from the start when you find enemy champions in the wilds they start lobbing spells at you.  For those of us that are accustomed to attacking lone champions in the wild, seeing them starting combat by throwing fireballs at us is a bit of a shock."

I suppose that Champions without ranks in any Element, cannot cast spells except by Annointed by Fire and such. I'll miss Imbuement (remmant of an old age) but it certainly didn't make so much sense to be able to increase the Elemental ranks of the non casters.

"For example, I like the ability to recruit monsters.  But it’s too hard to get and not rewarding enough when you do.  So the Bonding Ceremony and Mercenaries techs are gone.  Instead the ability to create those improvements comes on other techs that were already worth getting (higher level improvements that allow you to recruit things like dragons and ogres are still special techs).  Most importantly when you train a monster like a Drake or Troll in your cities they will start at the normal level for that monster type, not level 1.  So your drake will start as a level 6 drake and capable of doing some damage."

Must take note to save that removed stuff before the patch. I have never recruited monsters beyond the "Lets check them" factor so it'll be nice to have some real reasons to recruit them.

"The magic tree had some exciting things hidden in it but it needed some work to bring it out.  So we created a few new craftable items like magical staves, enchanted robes, etc.  Along with this came 30 new unit’s designs, 3 for each faction.  These include trainable Mages (units with magical staves that shoot fire or ice), mid-level warriors with magical weapons and end game units that have the best enchanted weapons, armor, traits and mounts the game has to offer.  If you see these marching over from the AI player you may be in trouble."

Ok, this comes from the modding side but I need to ask: shouldn't be possible to have optional branches in research? Like a whole branch that only appears if the first tech of it (which has less than 100 of appearing) does appear? Because right now I only get crashes. I mention it because I like how some techs are not available in all the games but they are single techs at the end of a branch. I suppose that for balance, that's better? Also, I know that the tech tree are quite simple in nature but... would be a zoom option a bad idea?

On topic, I loved the artifact creation in MoM and although I do not expect to get something like that for FE (at least not base game?), I welcome more magic items than a few rings, weapons and armours. I don't think that those things should be easy to create but with enough research and a good city structure, the channelers should be able to provide their mundane cousins with magical gear that helps them in more different roles than "Ring Bearer" and "Magical Meat Shield". Hopefully some magical robes are good enough to have some "mage" champions using them instead of the usual heavy armour?

Which reminds me: that purple staff at character creation? If I pick it, I never use any other weapon for my Sovereign. Best 1 point ever?

"Champions aren't being nerfed as much as things are being balanced around them.  The most significant direct change to champions is that injuries matter more.  If you have a champion with 6-7 injuries on him he will be severely handicapped, it may be time to hand his equipment over to a promising newcomer without the battle scars.  XP is divided by the members of group to make it less rewarding to steamroll the map with your stack of super heroes."

Considering that Champions can be killed by monsters (or were?) and enemy AIs, that their number is limited (no Dynasty and/or champion recruiting events) and that now they could end being not so usefull if you don't care about their health: do we get some kind of "Retire Champion" option? It could be something like "You lose this Champion but get a random level 1 new one". Or maybe you must select a city and he cannot be moved from there (can defend it) but provides bonuses to the city based in his Path(s). I only see the AI suffering from crippled Champions anyway (load/savers won't suffer it and careful players only if unlucky?).

"But the big changes are in dramatically decreasing the tech costs.  There were always good units to make, but if your champions were level 7-8 by the time you got to them then it didn't matter.  Now your trained units are better, come earlier and mean more."

Some more speed in the default research pace is not bad but... dramatically decreasing costs? My issue has been more with the placement of some techs (or the existance of some), like those archers that by the time I can research them, they have no place for them in my main army. But yeah, maybe it's tech cost matter too.

If you are going to significantly decrease tech costs, can you please consider trimming the tech tree into fewer techs? There doesn't need to be 60, if 30 will do just as well. With too fast techs, techs will become an annoyance, it already interrupts the gameplay with pop-ups constantly, now it will be "significantly" worse.

Thanks for the info, sounds promising!

I like this.. if its used to provide more differentiation to Champions. Getting a Champion that has access to 2 or 3 books should be different from gaining one that is a melee power house. While the potential to turn one into the other is still there.. in most cases I think it should be encouraged to concentrate on a heros strengths when leveling them. Otherwise they are all just nameless pawns to turn into whatever you want and may as well be trainable units at that point.

This hopefully will help to provide more character to each of them. Getting jim the solemn mage should be.. and feel different from getting joe stoic warrior. In the current and previous versions you don't get a sense of any  differences short of beginning stats.

(this goes back to other suggestions but I would like to see special feats granted for specific paths.. and have champs start on a specific path... leaving sovs the only one a person can fully customize)

I'm glad I have Heavenfall to almost always post the things I want to say for me. Often all I need to do is point out that I agree. Like I do now.

Is .78 still scheduled to be out this week? (That big list makes me think no)

Love the direction and info!

^^ What the guy above me asked. Are we to expect those changes this week? If so, I've got something to be *really* excited about this week!

All sounding very good. Especially the monster recruitment, which I have always wanted to do in elemental, but never made a go of.

Simply increasing the tech costs is not the way to fix the problem. I still won't have the economy I need to support them. Similarly, giving (as suggested by others) people swords and bows etc in the first place will just make more basic equipment redundant.

The pacing is jut (and has always been) all over the shop. I really think the design team needs to sit down and ask themselves some big questions, like:

How long is a typical game? How tough will the monsters be in the early, mid and late games? How tough are my troops at that point? What levels will my champions be at that point? How fast will they have to move to be able to do this? How fast should an army be able to move from one town to another? How do these answers compare to each other? Look at the answers to those questions for different time points in a typical game in the current version, and you will see massive discrepancies. So you need to bring them together and make them comparable. Then you need to design the economy and technologies for these time points to support the units required. Right now, for example, I usually get a level 3 city before I have anything better than basic spearmen, so it seem like I am economically in the midgame while I am militarily still very much in the early game. And I am probably only just getting aorund to founding my second settlement, so I am still in the early game from a territorial point of view.

The game just doesn't feel like it has been designed from a top-down view, like it should be. Instead it feels like lots of chefs adding salt to the broth without consideration for the long term effects of their actions. It's like the monster designer said "well, a bear has 5 attack, so a troll should have maybe 10 attack?" and the the quest designer said "let's give him a reward that increases his attack by one," and before you know it the champion's got 30 attack from all those little rewards and is fighting a bear with 10 attack, the city's level 5 but still fielding militia, no one's got any spells or monsters, we haven't gotten round to founding any settlements, no one knows what part of the game we're in and no one knows what the hell went wrong.

It's like watching an amateur DJ mixing a track. The bass player tell him he cant hear the bass, so he turns up the bass. But then he loses the kick drum so he turns that up too. But then the whole thing is really bassy so he turns the rest up and a day later the whole track is too loud so he has start from scratch all over gain.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If we increase the tech speed we'll be piling them on at one hell of a rate. Is is not a possibility, for example, that instead of the tech rate beng too slow, the rest of the game is too fast? I can tell you for a fact that champion equipment and levelling is too fast. The pacing needs to be all planned together from the top-down.

Sounds Excellent

Magic ranged units might have a place as strong vs armored troops but just as expensive.

Sooo happy that my monsters arn't so weak now, make sure you change quest reward monsters as well.Monsters should become significantly tougher if you can lv them not just an hp bonus but dmg/def and even new abilities at high lv.

I like that your redoing Sov because as an umbar player my Sov is pretty bad. A cruel warlord is just a horrible idea.

Thank you for taking out the Imbuement, I have never liked this concept.  Also the other changes sound great.  So for the patch after next are you going to improve the Tactical combat with bigger maps and terrain then bean something? 

Also we need more weapons and weapon types. Currently there is a lack of polearms in the game. It would also be nice to add armor and weapons at the beginning.

The Armor could be cloth armor and maybe it could be -1 to movement with high level armor having a -1 per type (i.e: Leather -2, Chain -3, Plate -4 etc.) Then maybe if the tech is researched you could have sppicilty armor both magical and non-magical reduce this.)

The begining weapons should be one of each type: STaff, Dagger/sword, Polearm (spear), one-handed ax (slash), Two handed weapon: Axe, War hammer etc.) These should have the begining stats similar to whats in the game now we just need more types added.

Also as we gain weapon tech they should each have weapons from every class or we could have several weapon type techs to choose from that cost the same (i.e. All the following cost the same research to learn - One hanned slash, two handed slash, one handed Blunt, Two handed blunt, One haned Pierce, Two handed Pierce etc)  And each type could have several differant type of weapons to choose from with different stats and maybe a special ability

Also there needs to be a way to heal injuries. It would be no fun to have a useless champion hanging around for the reset of the game. Maybe either have the inguries be in effect for so many rounds and/or have healing spells that can heal them. But if you do have healing spells that can heal them then it needs to be only one injury healed per casting. And should be limited to one casting per Champ or Sov per turn.

I will have to disagree here. Custom factions should be just as powerfull as the premade faction. I should be able to remake Krax (sp?) in the custom factions area. And I should also be able to edit the exsisting factions as well. Also I should be able to delete any custom faction I create.

Now keep in mind that if you don't like this you do not have to create custom faction or you can create weak custom factions depending on how you like the play the game.

I would like to see more weakneses added to choose from in the custom creation

So you want to take the system that makes losing champions in combat and make it meaningless in the same patch where it will finally first become meaningful?

Actully no. If you are going to use an Injury system then we should be allowed to heal the injury. Yes injuries should mean something and they should last several turns before they can be healed. And you can have healing them be expensive. Also Champions should be able to die in combat only to be resurrected if the Soverign or other Champion has a resurrect or raise dead spell.

i like the changes and the direction the game is leaning towards! great job guys!

There is already a potion in the current game which heals injuries.

- Manii Names

Quite true Manii, i've had it a couple of times.

There is? I know there is healing for hit points but did not know about healing for inguries what is it called.?

Not sure of the name, but it is awarded after some quests.  It looks like a round jug and has a red ribbon tied around it.

I have had it twice in one game and healed typhoid and a gangranous hand on a couple of champions.

Andy.

Potion of Restoration.  As well as healing all injuries on one champion, it heals for 100 Hitpoints.  I can't imagine that you'd wait for a battle to use it though (and it takes a while for a champion to reach 100HP unless you keep buffing your Constitution).