That's how they look Ragnin.

ev4debug I have only positive experience so far with Mod Manager. Great work, can switch between all mods installed and no mods installed in no time at all.

Are Golems supposed to get flying horses?  Because they do.

Flying horses? Huh?

Edit: Updated the Monsters page so it is possible to link to particular monsters.

Flying Horses:

Good catch... no it can't fly. The bonus was supposed to be on dragon mounts but I must have placed it wrong. Will fix it in next release.

BTW I have to say that the 1/2 mana income from all sources other than your Sovereign is incredibly crippling for the golems.  Makes them a very hard-core antimagic faction, even more so than the gnomes.  Gnomes get 25% less mana and +25% cost of tactical spells, but the Golems even have a hard time just casting city enchantments early on, much less anything else.  Can't even enchant their units because it's too expensive to maintain (low income and x2 cost on enchantments).

It does make for a very different playstyle, but it is also very one-dimensional. 

If I might suggest two things (so far):

• Lower the mana income penalty to 33% instead of 50%.  Currently it is so crippling that you can't even support one spellcaster for a very very long time.  Having to wait 12 turns to develop mana so you can cast enchantments on your second city is just ridiculous.
• Give Lochean in-combat health regen somehow, to make her sync up with the rest of the golem horde properly.  Cosinivatha has it, Lochlean should too IMO.

Thank you very much!

I agree, especially about the one-dimensional bit. Taking away magic from a faction like this really removes one of the most significant gameplay elements from them. They do not have the special faction abilities to make up for that (compare to gnomes that get crazy special items).

I will see what I can come up with. I'm definitely not giving free tactical health regen to all golem champions.

Just a heads up to let you know I LOVE the new monsters you're adding Hf. Some need a little balance check after release (like the faeries just got) but they add so much extra flavour! Fought some Darkwasps yesterday and they mean business, but seem to be nicely balanced.

For some reason I don't seem to be able to win my games on hard anymore (may very well be my own crappy play) whereas I won over 50 percent of my games on hard in vanilla FE. I love it though!

Some factions are very weak against particular other factions. For example, Golems take 20% more damage from Blunt damage, whereas Gnomes gain special blunt weapons that deal extra damage. Elves have good pierce damage and centaurs are weak to that. Frost Giants massacre groups of enemies and Greenskin depend on big groups to win. It is very possible that you will find yourself in a situation where you need to alter how you attack different factions. This is intended. However, I don't think this necessarily means the game is harder. Rather it is a result of these factions being more diverse than the vanilla factions. But no enemy should be unconquerable by anyone. The scales are simply tilted slightly more than you'll find in the vanilla game.

VVhen mousing over the "Blood Forge" resource in the strategic map, the tooltip text description is missing. It's currently saying "String not found".

Unfortunately that bit is hardcoded, I can't change it.

I agree, this is a better explanation than saying the game 'feels harder'. Like I said, I really like this balance!

Re Golems. how about giving them +25% to buildings construction? that would make them less crippled by not having access to enchanted hammers etc..

RE Golems:  How about the reason why they have no available mana is due to the fact that their bodies consume it to continue operating?  This would lead to more magical traits / unusual units.  The problem is right now they don't have much in the way of incentives to make up for the complete crippling of their spellcasting ability.

The faction's abilities have to stand on their own. ALL the factions are getting unique and unusual units.

I'm thinking about giving them henchmen. If you can make one hero golem you can make another... and it would tie in nicely with their fast strategic health regen. That's a sufficiently powerful faction ability which also introduces a new type of system for the player, since magic is so weak. Lore-wise it fits nicely, since they are all about individuals going around the world learning from their experiences. That's how they became a faction, after all.

Heavenfall, can you confirm that Golems need proper yield appearing on the map before founding a village? I may have found a nasty bug, perhaps correlated to the 'pioneer don't get consumed one'.

Yes, they settle like everyone else.

Great work on this mod. I appreciate your hard work. After 400 or so turns I have one problem. The tails of the mob fiery gorgons are always missing. The Gorgons are the only mob I have found this way. Also they do not seem to do anything but stand there in battle. Everything else, so far seems to be working great. Any advice would be appreciated.

Can you post a save game of that please?

The fiery gorgon's "tail" is defined in Stormworld_ExpandedFactions_Champions - are you using that submodule?

Make the henchmen cost 50 mana or something like that, instead of influence.  Mana is so tight it would be a good limiter on having a zillion of them.

I am finding it very hard to counter Frost giant archers. I am not sure if i am doing something wrong but 5 of them can obliterate most armies i put on the field. Anyone have an ideas?

Also it seems the ai builds alot of archers in the couple of games i have played.

Since my foray with the golems has come to an end for now I am giving the Angels a try.  My initial thoughts are that the per-shard bonuses are gigantic, but we'll have to see how it works out in practice.  I had the game settings configured with normal magic, not wanting to skew the results.

Faction Notes:

• It felt weird to have normal amounts of mana, after playing the Golems.
• No mounts is a big deal.  Angels are slow moving (weird huh?) and can't really use heavy armour due to the weight.
• As I mentioned w the Golems, in-combat health regen is like the greatest thing ever.  And the Angels get it for free, no traits required.  In fact if the Angel sovereign was not a fire based warlock I'd probably try converting all of the shards to life shards just to see what happens.  So far I have converted two water shards to life, as I think +2 regen and +4 damage outweighs +6 dodge.  Especially since I have zero water mages ATM.  As I get farther into the game though the regen is less useful, since so much damage is being dealt.  I think it would work better with very high defense units, and the Angels can't build those very easily due to encumbrance issues.
• With some shards backing them, Angel garrisons are actually very strong.

Misc:

• I began with Eddir as my starting hero, and he costs 216g to recruit?  Perhaps this is a little high, considering he's a beginning hero with nothing truly grotesquely strong about him.  It crippled me early on since I couldn't afford his fees and thus only had my sovereign available.
• Recruited an Elf hero (never played Elf faction yet) and was surprised they did not have enhanced movement in the forest.  Too unbalancing?
• I like the movement of the Gibbai arms when they are attacking, kind of a backswing, hold it hold it BOOM.  The downside is I only get to see it while they are attacking me!

I'm playing too the Angels. I find hard they can't have something to compensate for lack of horses... Perhaps they can have a flat move cost of 1 (in hills and forests) instead? 

And really, what is the use of their wings right now?

ps: I too believe that shard bonus is too high. Remember, some of us are playing on large maps and even with normal magic, you can have a decent amount of shards... Perhaps you can limit the bonus to at most x shards factored in the calculation per bonus? Like 3 or 4 ?

Played a couple games against centaurs novv. One game vvas Challenging AI difficulty, this current game is Hard AI. Both games the centaurs vvere absolutely kicking ass. In my current game, they had tvvice my faction povver, so they declared vvar on me. I eventually got around to attacking them some 50 turns later. By then they'd lost a lot of faction povver, almost half... VVhen I got to their lands, they vvere absolutely teaming vvith monsters and empty lairs... I'm assuming the lost faction povver vvas due to monster attacks. I conquered 7 cities quickly, leaving them immediately undefended... after a fevv turns 5 of the 7 cities vvere destroyed by the roaming monsters. From that, I'm assuming the game stopped attacking their cities vvith monsters after a fevv losses.

Is it possible through mods to cause the AI factions to devote more time to destroying monsters after they lose cities, instead of getting monster immunity?

Also, Fiery Gorgons don't have a unit description in the game.

UPDATE: Finished the game against Hard AI factions and vvas checking the graphs... The Centaurs started vvith about eight times my population, and more research than any other faction. About 1/3rd into the game, their income took a huge upsurge, going to double the next closest faction, same vvith their research, going to three times the next factions (mine). About halfvvay through, their military climbed almost vertically, looking like it doubled in a couple turns (all cities rushing military units?). This is all stuff I haven't seen in any other factions this game, or any other game. Is anybody else finding Centaur AI Factions have this sort of miraculous grovvth?