Completely agree with the OP. Heroes should have classes, special abilities you can unlock as you level based on their class, and item restrictions based on their class. They should be balanced so they are actually worth a damn in fights with squads and big monsters. And then make sure there is around 10x more variety of hero types wandering the world waiting for a sovereign to hire them.
I agree that this needs to be the top priority. I can forgive a lot of bugs, balance issues and wonky mechanics as long as I'm having fun. With the AI a complete pushover on ridiculous level, I'm not having much fun any more.
I don't see why they couldn't make it so you can just expand your buildings over the forest. Building gets ordered, peons chop down forest and begin constructing the building in it's place. Maybe make construction take longer if you build it on a forest tile.
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The short answer is no, its not. But check back again in 3 to 6 months and we'll see.
Charon, Who are you to go around telling people their opinions are wrong? I don't care much about bugs, I know those will be fixed and I haven't complained about any of them other than to report some in the tech support forum. What I care about is the fundamental game design and gameplay experience and I currently think in my opinion that it's pretty bad. The tech trees are shallow, there aren't enough techs, they don't force you to make any meaningful choices, the likelyhood
You forgot for your list at the top all the +gold% bonus you can get when you level your city to level 2,3,4,5. I think you get +20%, +30%, +40% and +50% respectively. And they stack. Do that in a city with a couple gold mines and combine with all the multiplier buildings and that city will be rolling in gold.
I just don't build my cities too close to the forest personally. Glad to hear there are spells that sort of do it for those dedicated enough to pursue it.
I felt the same way while it was still shiny and new, but now that I've played for a while I've concluded the game itself is actually quite bad. The engine is amazing, the potential is there, but currently the actual game design, mechanics, balance and AI are all quite bad and shallow. I do really want this game to be a success and end up as a classic of the genre, which is why I'm still on these forums. I guess we'll see what they can do to improve it over the next 6 months.
Sinful, I agree with you completely on point 1 about modding. I hate being told if I don't like it I should mod it too. Mods are great and all but I have no skills there myself and no interest in learning. If people make good mods for this game I'll eventually check them out, but I also expect a polished and fun base game from Stardock. You may be right with point 2 as well, I certainly hope the game is much much better by christmas, however the more I play the more I get the feelin
Incidently, I really wish population mattered in this game and you could do normal 4x type things like tax them. In this game population is mostly irrelevant, it's all about grabbing those resource nodes and getting your cities to multiply the hell out of them.
[quote who="Nenjin" reply="3" id="2748386"]When your city levels up, take the 20% (30%, 40%) gildar production increase. At City level two there will be more structures that produce gildar. Focus on those structures, don't over do it on the other structures (the prestige ones, the military ones). Gildar right now is just slow to increase on a per city basis. When you start getting multiple cities, or multiple gold nodes, and research the mining techs and refined mining t
Caravans only multiply food income, not gold.
Found cities where there are gold mines (ideally 2+ within the city's influence radius if you can find it). Level up the city and take the +gold% option each time. Build all the gold multiplier buildings (e.g. trading post, bazaar, mint, etc) in the cities with gold mines to multiply the output further. Also have some stacks killing mobs out in the wilderness for extra gold income.
I think Pyromancers list of tips is an excellent summary of what you should be doing. I wanted to add more emphasis to the point that population is completely irreleavnt in this game, getting a good mix of resourece nodes is the key to a good start. Right from turn 1, I start spamming some peasants to go scouting in all directions and figure out where the gold mines, food, materials, libraries, temples, and mines are (in that order of importance) and quickly have pioneers coming behin
I wouldn't call this an exploit really, just a badly designed and very overpowered unit. My suggestion is to remove the AOE and make their ability single target only.
I find generally there always are very few arcane temples on the map. Lost libraries are always abundant in comparison.
I would love to see MoM2 made, but I have no problem with EWOM trying to go its own way and not copy MoM too closely. As long as where they end up is with gameplay that is as fun, engaging and as full of interesting choices as MoM was. They still have a long way to go to get there. We'll see where they get over the next 6 months.
About the only other thing you can do is scout out more of the map and go grab cities with arcane temples.
[quote who="Sythion" reply="1" id="2747490"]I disagree. I think Stardock is generally getting more leadway than any other company would get, because they have the respect of players and reviewers alike. They'll still have my respect, even after Elemental, but I'm not going to suger coat this: This is one of the worst games I've ever played from a balance/gameplay design perspective. Also, delaying the game would have resulted in a much different game, so long as people were able to
[quote who="TOWDrac" reply="2" id="2747511"]Hmm, I do see what you mean, but I do think that more haters are flocking to Stardock than I've ever seen. Justified criticism they do very much deserve, but not the sheer attacks and such that are thrown around. [/quote] You need to get out more. Go check out the forums for just about any MMO launch EVER. Then you'll see what real whining, ranting and foot-stomping is all about. Elemental's launch is quite tame in comparison.
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I don't think it's working as intended. The tooltip for the ability says it's supposed to give +1 to prestige, but the city info page says it's giving +100%. Doubling your prestige is certainly very very good and may indeed be overpowered.
This thread is making me seriously nostalgic. I think I'm going to go buy MoM again! Sadly I'm pretty confident that I'll have more fun playing MoM again despite its bad AI and balance issues than I am currently playing EWOM now that the shiny newness has worn off and I'm left feeling that the game is currently quite shallow. Luckily I purchased EWOM knowing I was getting this game for the long haul so I'm not too disappointed with all the current issues. However, I heartily a
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Oh, I don't think it would be hard to make huge maps. I just think that there is currently not enough content and balance to make playing on a huge map very much fun. You'd run out of techs alone before you've even explored a fraction of a map that size.
Good post OP. I mostly agree. The tech tree is one of my biggest concerns at the moment after AI. I agree that it presents false choices, but disagree that there are 5 tech trees. Right now there is really only one tree in 5 flavours. The only choice is in the order you go down the trees based on your current priorities, but it doesn't take long for tech to be racing along and I would think everyone is backfilling to grab techs they skipped earlier. In other words, everyone ends up getting ev
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I think the large maps are plenty big enough. I have around 12 cities in my current large map game which is already enough micro and 4/5ths of the map is still hidden.