The bigger problem is when you inadvertently build a city or outpost near a monster den and either immediately, or after the city’s influence expands, you unleash these monsters by displacing them from their homes. Dragons, Slags, Elemental Lords, and Shrills can give you a run for your money early on, and even into the mid-game in the case of dragons. It is important to keep these monsters in mind whenever you expand and explore. Inevitably, you will eventually run into these harder monsters as you expand out from your starting area.
Ok now it's official, the current monster system is bad. Having those endgame monster come loose to wreck cities and hand you their unprotected lairs is silly random and frustrating. My biggest grief is how it makes monsters no real barrier to expansion, and how monsters have been nerfed to compensate. The game would pace so much better with a functioning monster system.Everything from ZoC on lairs, replacing wandering guardians with more spawned wanderers, having guardians prioritize ZoC sources, and having monsters not completely destroy cities but instead just do damage to them has been suggested. Choose one!
Late game is still a tedious chore. I really don’t like playing the late game.
Indeed. Hard to fix though. It would help if some monsters survived to threaten players, we had more in your face and interesting diplomacy, or there was more stuff to do late game like dungeons or real alternative victory conditions.
