Thanks again, Derek, for an advanced look at the change-log.

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Nice - Blizzard can be cast in an area will hit your units (and it will damage them)

Really Nice - AI evaluates whether it should be training archers/catapults/mounted units more effectively. I have never encountered an AI Army that was Archer/Catapult focus, while my human archer focused armies have been very effective against the AI.

I would like to see a new anti-archer spells such as Greater Gust of Wind, that would offer a larger dodge bonus vs. ranged attacks AND affect ALL units on the battlefield or the D&D classic - Warp Wood that would decrease the accuracy of the targeted archer unit. These would help the AI counter an archer focused army.

Likewise, I would like to see the Tarth lean towards fielding an archer focused army and AIs tend towards the mage specialization if they control alot of shards related to their traits.

More champion level-up traits would open up new strategies. A champion is skilled in surprising unrest if stationed in a town/city - i.e. Enforcer (Inquisitor) I -10% unrest, Enforcer II - 20% unrest, Enforcer III - 40% unrest. Having a skilled Inquisitor stationed in an captured enemy town would be useful on large maps.

I've tried both resource cost and high population (enough for it to matter) for pioneers before, and as I've explained way back when, there's 2 problems with making "costly" pioneers:

a. it kills the outpost mechanic (as someone mentioned). An expensive pioneer (regardless of how you make them "expensive") basically means you almost never want to use them for an outpost (unless absolutely necessary - and often only when you can't settle anymore). The AI, however, will be more than happy to cripple itself building them... which leads to #2:

b. the AI becomes completely crippled. Between them using those super valuable units to build random outposts and getting them killed by monsters, AI expansion was severely hampered. In most games, at least one of the AI would end up stuck to just their home city and proceeds to get rolled. A few times all of the AI was stuck that way... making for a rather disappointing game. I tinkered with the values quite a bit (even tried using unique accumulating resources) until eventually giving up because of this.

So unless there are some massive changes planned for both the outpost mechanic and the AI usage of pioneers, I really don't think it's a good idea to use population OR gold (or any other resource for that matter). I honestly don't like how cheap they are atm, but at least it works.

On the off chance that Derek or Brad are following this thread, I'd like to point out two very simple bugs and their fixes, and a bonus typo:

Firstly, the spell Soulburning doesn't calculate resist damage properly. The text says half damage on resist, but the math says 12 + (3*Shardstotal) for full damage, and 6 + (3*Shardstotal) for resisted damage. This is, obviously, only half BASE damage. The correct math should be (12 + (3*Shardstotal))/2.

Secondly, the unit "trait" which is used in unit design for "stealthy" doesn't seem to have any actual game effect other than a text description. The Sovereign picked ability applies a global -100 to monster aggression, but the unit trait has no modifier in it except for a text description. The variable for the unit's monster aggression needs to be added (preferably with a number less extreme than -100).

Also, there is also still the typo "<Text>If an enemy is particurly vulnerable or resistant to your attack you will see" in CoreFlavorText.xml

Increased the amount of resources spawned

Modified rarity of different world resources and their availability to have more variety

I wonder, how do these changes relate to the rarity of Iron/Crystal/Horses/Wargs in randomly generated maps? A few people (myself included) were having trouble with such resources being too rare (and non-existent, even) at times.

Not sure if I like the idea of pioneers costing population. Maybe it could work.

However I do know that the change would make building outposts with pioneers very expensive. You can't afford 30 pop for an outpost until late game. So if you are making this change you need a cheaper unit which can build outposts (much like settlers vs workers in Civilization to be honest, except I would be happy with the worker disappearing when it makes an outpost).

Small bug that should be fixed - the escape scroll (which exits a tactical battle), the description says it returns you to your capital.

Indeed, talk about too rare. In my last game, on a large map with 5 AI's, after having conquered the entire map, there were NO crystals, no horses, and no wargs on the entire map, and only 2 Iron deposits, both of which were in Wildlands. The entire war was fought with nothing better than leather armor, short bows, and maces, since they were the best that could be built with no crystal or metal. By time I cleared the wildlands to get the metal, it didnt' even matter anymore.

Exactly.  I thought I had just been unlucky in my game, so I molded my army around the limitations of the land.  I thought that my enemies had all of the valuable resources, but it turned out they didn't have any either. Kind of an issue considering it causes some games to be played through entirely with very little troop equipment progression, and with numerous technologies being rendered near pointless.

I'll be playing with "Dense" resource frequency from now on, so hopefully that helps.

I think this is because you chose a design where the populations are tiny for most of the game, and city growth is miniscule. Not that this is necessarily bad, but I think that's where the problem you had lies.

Out of curiosity, why?

If I have multiple sources of Twilight Honey, how will the bonus to unrest stack? 1 Twilight Honey is as good as 5 Twilight Honey, 5 Twilight Honey gives -9.6% unrest, 5 Twilight Honey gives -10% unrest, something else?

I tend to agree with Kalin that this might hurt gameplay, since in my experience I tend not to have more than 2 growth per turn in each city (and more frequently have 1 growth per turn in each city, while playing on a large map with not more than 5 cities (usually 3 to 4, depending on who my AI neighbors are and how close they are) by the time I start researching techs in the mid part of the civics and magic trees (sorry, I don't pay attention to turn numbers so this is about as good an estimate of where in the game I've reached as I can give you - by mid part, I mean techs at around the level of Economics), which continues throughout the game. The only time when I'm usually accustomed to having city growth rates higher than two is between the founding of my capitol and my second city. An outpost is not worth delaying city growth by 15 or more turns unless there are some really nice resources around there, or unless I feel that I really need to control access in an area (for instance, by blocking a 1-tile wide pass).

I do agree that the current system where founding a new city is largely costless is a bit off, but I'm not sure that this change for pioneers is a good one. If it does go through, I'd like to see a change in outpost mechanics to compensate (such as building outposts doesn't consume pioneers, or some other unit becomes the unit that builds outposts).

Kind of agree that it should be the SETTLE button, not the pioneer itself that has increased (population) cost. In order to not hurt the outpost mechanics and make it a viable option.

As mentioned before, goind with less cities should have much more tangible benefits. Apart from substantially higher growth, maybe some production/food bonuses as well? Maybe different lines of level upgrades, depending on number of cities player has? Like unique high level building that enables player with few cities to work on 2 things in queue simultaneously (in one town)? Player with few high level cities should be able to compete with empire of many mediocre towns.

Also, there should be huge difference between attacking low vs high level city. Conquering level 3 and above should require really major effort and should always, even in the late game, mean a risky business with severe casualties. Not that you walk over the whole AI empire of level 4-5 cities with one fireball hero and one cavalry unit. There are many options to achieve this mentioned on the forum, like militia armor, some kind of spell protection, buildings like "mercenary militia barracks", which would mean elite defenders for the town etc.

I like wars where villages change hands and get razed eventually, but towns hold until you put up serious effort, which has real chance of getting thwarted. High seats of power should not get smashed immidiately at your will... kind of more reflect reality.

Meh.  Y'all need to do some coding so that the population is spent when the city is founded.  An outpost should not cost 30 population.

Not all of the game's issues can be fixed though xml tweaks.

Agreed.

Must tred very lightly with this one.

I do like that pioneers will be much harder to build now.

I don't like how you still need pioneers to build outposts.

Imo (still....sorry for the rehash), scouts should be the unit of choice for building outposts, consuming the scout when doing so; especially now with pioneers costing population to produce. With the population cost, pioneers will only be built when absolutely necessary which means outpost construction just took a really big nose dive.

This comment scares the crap out of me. Essence is already too low in the game and you're removing more of it?

I like the idea of outposts costing population too. After all there needs to be people to run the things.

Also depending on how rare the shards will be, and even with current default settings, some of the spells might need to be adjusted on how they scale with shards.  By the time you will be able to conquer a reasonable number of shards, the other spells that scale to caster level (like fire bolt) will be so powerful you won't even waste mana on the other spells.  I guess it depends on how rare the shards really are, but it is something to consider looking at as well.

Since pioneers use 30 pop, how about changing scouts so you can use them to found outposts?

Can you please re-balance the Paragon spell? It is insanely powerful. In spite of the AI research bug which gives the AI crazy amounts of research I can still beat Insane difficulty because of Paragon. Why would I ever cast Destinys Gift when I can cast Paragon? In the previous patch DG mana cost was increased, but Paragon is much more potent anyway...

I still don't feel this is enough of an justification for giving Scout's the ability to found Outposts, yet 30 pop hopefully doesn't cripple the AI at all. Unless, when Pioneer's construct an Outpost, they use no pop, but when Scout's do they automatically use 15 pop from the settlement they're connected to, and require 200-300 Production points to be built.

Another way of dealing with the difference in value between settling and creating outposts would be making the pioneer able to create up to three outposts before it is "used up".

for 30 pop you would then get the choice between settling 1 city or building 3 outposts.

The more I think it over, the more I think that it should be the Settle button having population cost (Outpost respectively). In order not to cripple AI, which is loosing their pioneer armies in the wilds frequently.

The act of settling costs population instead of the pioneer seems to be a better idea, agreed.

No changes to lightning hammer?  That weapon does need to be nerfed.

To really cement the idea of pioneer=population cost, one might play with the idea of having Towns build pioneers 25% cheaper or faster. Those are the cities that are meant to be "growth centers", and with 30 population pioneers they will become much more important for that purpose with quite a few growth buildings (previously their only real benefit was gold production, influence and some faction-wide food bonuses).

A town with tower of dominion and well/inn might be very good indeed for the player that wishes for rapid expansion and outposts capturing world resources.

I am really happy and really concerned about this, all in one.  The happy part is in stopping so much city spam, as a 30 pop charge on making pioneers will really really slow down city advancement.  It implements a true cost to expansion, other than just diluting your prestige a little.

Now we come to the problem.  What if I want to skip the 2/3/0 and 3/3/0 spots near me to go for a 3/3/2 farther away?  This will lead to horrific amounts of unrest due to a non-contiguous Kingdom unless I once again sacrifice pop to make outposts and bridge the gap.  But if I'm going to do that I might as well have built the intermediary city, since if I have to pay the price regardless I might as well get some benefits (taxes, research and production).

The costs of creating an outpost should be less than the costs of creating a new city.

Please update soon, I'm tired of the AI tech trading garbage it kills the pace of the game for me.  I tried the "un-official" patch set out by frog, but whether it was because of steam, or my own idiocy, it didn't seem to fix the problem.  Last game, Year 61 on EPIC pacing, had the computer at 1265 Civ knowledge trading, with ranged magic. I had a total of 200 knowledge, and just finished getting tier 1 scepters myself.  Makes for an impossible game to win, due to having 7 ranged magic units attacking your three.  This is on Normal difficulty, and I had more cities then any of the computers did with little to no unrest, and no taxes... Soooooo i don't think it was my own lack of skill, although I'm not ruling that out.

Please patch for steam as soon as possible.

First post for me / lurker / avid fan of the game

Krunchy