Its a forum, dont take it personal

I still hope troops gets to get quicker to build, and I start with proper troop research at some point, anyways, I will probably play a modded version after release anyways as the current balance for heroes -> units is not about the tech tree or cities, but the insane weapon drops that... sometimes decides to pop into your face.

Also beelining for horses is best atm IMO. only slightly better than master scouts

Sicnerely
~ Kongdej

Actually, I do not even bother researching mounted warfare until very late in the game.  I beeline for an AI town, and have a hero buy two mounts

At insane, the AI gets horses before I can reach it.  Sometimes it even has wargs, which I prefer for support troops (initiative)

Oh, I don't.  If I sound exasperated, it's because the quoting and searching mechanisms in this forum software are about as bad as I've ever seen, anywhere.  That's where my real frustration lies.

I have great hopes for SeanW's mod, based on what I've played of it in the last beta.  But this beta's still all about balancing, so I expect to see a lot of changes over the next few weeks.

Depends on what you're playing.  I'm experimenting at the moment with Betrayers plus Natural Leader: all heroes, both sides, every one of them free.  On densely populated champions it's a ridiculous win, but when champions are set to sparse, and a map to large, with expert world and dense monsters, it's pretty damn good.

Oh well, stop using the best tactics already!

ATM my home rule is only use my heroes up to lvl 4 where I pick path of the governor and station them (Sometimes level 5 or 6 to gain governor traits).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

No.

Although I also play with home rules.  A similar one to yours goes - heroes cannot leave allied dominion.  Obviously, I do not always use it.

Hehe my heroes also had to break the rules in the current game, not because my trained units are underpowered... just because heroes are so much better... and not using them will cause your defeat.
(Lategame units, the big boost to heroes is heroes start being awesome from turn 1. units needs tons of research, and after that only spears really work...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Hint, dont hit quote instead of Edit.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Oops, clicked wrong quote button.  Someone censor me

As an academic, I guess I should post a retraction/correction/something; so, here's the quote that I agree with, with proper attribution:

Still agree with it.  Early game feels good to me.  Like early human history; there wasn't a lot happening on the scale of ordered cultures interacting with each other.

To Glazunov1, my apologies.  

Now back to the game, where all of us should be anyway.  Enough words, more fun

This is a flaw that needs to be addressed imo. Generally when you buy goods from another nation, they impose tarriffs on you unless you have a free trade aggreement. Why should it be different in FE? I recommend that the purchase of goods, including mounts, from other nations have their price increased by....enough to make you second guess as to whether or not it is the correct decision to buy stuff from other nations. I would figure a 50-100% increase in price would be sufficient.

In addiiton. Horses are still too cheap. Should bump the cost up to 100 gildars.

The OP is dead on.

Soloing the game with your sov or a group of heroes has always been the only viable tactic, this latest patch nerfed the heck out of city and army building while leaving the sov and heroes untouched.

And yet the developers still insist this is a TBS game and not an RPG like skyrim where instead of smiting you get to rule cities. (which is why they have not developed the RPG aspect a whole lot more)

Oh sure, the 3 turn limit was reduced to 1... BUT, we had 50% to 100% increase in cost per building. Double research costs. Min 25g to rush production. And nerfed essence (so even if you nail a high essence spot you can't make it a proper city).

Because you a single person buy a single horse. Not buying enough horses to create an entire cavlery... There is no possible way to STOP a person from stealing a horse or buying a single horse from a merchant willing to trade with a NON ENEMY which you suspect might be an enemy one day.

Also tariffs do not apply for a foreigner who is IN YOUR NATION. They apply for exporting goods to other nations (which in elemental doesn't exist, period).

Now, if you want to argue GAMIST limitations that's different, but don't go saying that this is unrealistic.

Anyone here can point me at instructions on how to mod the game?

I want to create a balance mod that is simplicity itself... 75% across the board cost cut in building construction and maybe a reduction in research costs...

I bet it will make strategies other then superstack or sov solo viable.

Right now we are mostly backing up the core files and modding directly from there. If you are just doing a minor change to production, You would want to still probably do it this way. It's pretty easy to go in there and change the labor costs. A good starting project for any modder. Might want to check out the FE Modding threads for reference.

Oh and welcome to the dark side of the forums... 

Sure they do. When you leave the foreign country, you have to declare your purchases and pay tax accordingly.

I guess some people can not figure out how to manipulate the game settings to create a challenge. I think the set up options makes the game MORE playable since you can adjust a game difficulty (speed, resources, mana, etc) instead of just adjusting the AI difficulty. Learn to manage the set up options to make better games. Mos tlikely might take you a few tries to find out which setting makes the best game.

A sov is walking across the border not taking an airport.

And you only have to do what you stated for substantial purchases (both in value and in quantity)... that is, where its clear you are importing to resell. I traveled a lot and never managed to reach such a threshold myself.

Also, those are tariffs on IMPORTS not on EXPORTS. No nation applies that as you leave. They apply tariff on incoming goods.

And as the sov you aren't gonna tax yourself. Also, again... walking across the border.

1. The game should be balanced on the default.

2. You are simply wrong in asserting that there is any setting you can make at game creation which fixes the issue where in this supposedly TBS game your cities and armies are worthlessly behind the champions and sov.

I agree with the OP as well, that for higher difficulty settings the SOV levelling is by a far reach the most viable approach left.

And that is not part of the core play idea of an empire SUPPORTED and not dominated by heroes (at least if I may believe this quote by Derek: "The core experience of Fallen Enchantress is building, leveling your units, leveling your cities, designing units, building things." here ).

Maybe I'm mistaken, but my suspicion is that the difficulties Ridiculous and Insanity were not introduced with any serious balance in mind but more as a clear marker for gamedesign, of what would need to be fixed. Namely, if it is possible to beat that level consistently, it is not intended to be possible and the balance will need to be addressed. Maybe I'm wrong, but that is my suspicion, the adavantages given are just so Ridiculous .ie. Insane

So what is making sov levelling so powerful atm? The Issues I'm seeing atm are:

1)The possibility to walk everywhere completely unmolested (Trait Masterscout)  - my suggestion would be to remove the NOT attack switch, the movement by itself is already awesome - I personally never use that skill anymore as it feels as if I'm cheating.

2)The ability to run circles around some of the tougher mobs in tactical combat (very tough mobs like obsidian Golem with only 2 movement, but where even only one hit would probably kill you), with sufficient initiative and movement of 4 (horses).  This is based on the Tactical AI making only one move and then stopping (for extra defense I'm assuming), when it is not able to reach the opponent, but is inside the movement range of the opponent. With unlimited turns, and as long as your initiative is sufficiently higher it is possible to keep chipping away at the mob, even if it takes forever. - My suggestion here would be to change AI programming to maximum move for closing in on enemy with out any regard for defensive bonus, as long as the power relationship is clearly in favour (STRONG vs MEDIUM etc.) AND/OR to install a max turn limit of something like 50, with anybody still alive at the end returned to starting health.

3)Wilderness is too easy/non threatening. Mobs are moving too slowly and allow easy picking off of monsters one by one. They seem to only attack if directly next to them, and even then only sometimes (still love the popup window even if most of the time nothing happens ). - My suggestion here would be to allow mobs to move at least 2 moves (not only the one) while looking for an opponent. Suddenly mob congestions would be much more dangerous.

Some steps have been taken along this route. Below a screenshot of 3 Obsidian Golems running FAR outside the imperium borders (imperium is located behind mountainrange to the east), but they were still only running around (admittedly scaring the bejeezus out of me the first time around, as I had only lvl 3 or so heroes then) and not attacking anything.

This will break suspension of disbelief.

You can't justify it with "magic" because magic needs to be internally consistent.

Then you will hate my life 5 spell Miracle Day. It gives all units max strategic regeneration and 1 tactical regeneration. That is all units in the game.

Huh, I thought it was only your own units.  Now I REALLY want to unlock that spell,

Nope, nothing wrong with that spell in terms of suspension of disbelief (although there might be balance issues).

It is a spell, and it has to be cast, and it costs mana. All of which are internally consistent and does not break suspension of disbelief. All of which were lacking from your previous suggestion which was not a spell, cost no mana, and had no justification or explanation... and was applied in some cases and no in others (full heal if it takes 50 rounds to fight but not full heal if you win at 49th round)

The problem with your previous suggestion was that it utterly disregards any sort of internal consistency

Wasn't my suggestion, I just thought I would shamelessly promote my cool spells. 

I"m not touching the default settings until release- I also believe testing needs to be done on default settings for the sake of balance.

While I'm ok with the production nerfs, they did buff heroes, who didn't need buffing.

Troops need to perform better vs melee heroes, especially groups of 5+.

Big monsters and magic should be the counter to troops.

I think warrior heroes, properly talented, should be able to tear through troops more efficiently than, say, assassin or defender heroes.  I also think that it should be significantly harder than it currently is to build a warrior hero that can do that.

Magic is fine, IMO, though I've been noticing magic upgrades are stupidly hard to come by now.

I would really like to see a starting situation where:

1 Initial troops that you can build are more effective in combat than initial heroes.

2 Starting monsters scattered around the world are strong enough to beat initial heroes, but are defeat-able by starting heroes plus initial troops.

3 Heroes don't just become capable of beating starting monsters simply by exploring; combat is required.

I enjoy heroes becoming powerful as they level up. I just want them to be about at the level of 'a guy' at level 1. And have starting troops being '3 guys', and thus stronger than the heroes.

I would like to be able to play without free unprotected goodie huts that make heroes awesome without them having to do anything clever.

Have been away for a few days (big family Birthday:D), so can only now answer to your post taltamir.

The basic reason for the healthreset was to have a mechanic which prevents grinding down of mobs, which are by perception so much more powerful than the hero (like obsidian golem against hero lvl 4 or 5 on a horsy) and the only reason the hero can win is due to AI programming (I won't call it stupidity, as I myself wouldn't know how to start doing it right - but I do think its an exploit).

And on the health reset, there is already a similar mechanic in game: The Health gain on lvl up. Did u ever notice that troops who after the first fight make a level or 3, with one of them having sustained a single hit of 2 damage and the other none, the troop with the 2 damage has suddenly also all the extra health due to lvlup missing, resulting mostly in a loss of fighting men in the troop, while the undamaged troop gets all the levelup HP for free?

Finally I would much prefer for Fallen Enchantress to NOT introduce the 50 turn limit and to let the heroes duke it out, but not knowing how to program the AI this could be another option to reduce the possible exploit.

But most importantly: Everybody be happy as it's a great BIrthday